


Turn From Stone

by harryromper



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Luna Lovegood, Don't copy to another site, Ex-Auror Harry Potter, Ghosts, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Historian Hermione Granger, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Founders - Freeform, M/M, Magical Theory, Minor Hannah Abbott/Neville Longbottom, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Post-Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-11 22:23:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19935478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harryromper/pseuds/harryromper
Summary: Something happened in the hours after the final battle, after the evacuation of the living and the dead. As the last of the survivors left the castle, and as the castle itself turned its wounded back on them all. The loss of Hogwarts has been felt by their entire community. And it’s something that needs to be put right.Harry knows there’s nothing he can do to stop Hermione (war hero, historian, author of the reissued “Hogwarts: A History”) once she sets her mind to something. Even an extremely risky last-ditch effort to restore the ancient castle and lay its newest ghosts to rest. What he wasn’t counting on was her insistence that Draco Malfoy be part of the plan.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to @inveigler81, @lettersbyelise and @1degosuperego for being tireless, helpful and supportive alphas. To @dancingontheceiling for being such an amazing beta, and to @coriesocks for being the best britpicker.

“There’s no way this works.” 

Robert thinks it’s maybe the third time he’s said this, but his complaints are falling on deaf ears. It took them far longer to walk up here from Hogsmeade than Carl had guessed. Even if no one stops them to ask questions when they go back to the Broomsticks to use the Floo, they’re going to be late getting home. 

He’s in so much trouble.

Up ahead, Pete shoves another branch aside as he forces his way through the overgrown path.

“It’ll work. Grandpa’s journal was clear. This tunnel only gets you onto the school grounds, not into the castle itself. There’s no reason it’ll be blocked up. They probably don’t even know that it’s there.”

This sounded like fun a week ago in the dying days of summer in Cornwall. A lark to set up their last months at school the right way. Make them the legends of seventh year. But now, the reality of lying to his mother about a study group and sneaking off on this harebrained scheme with his friends is quickly losing its appeal. Robert curses as a branch snaps back from Carl’s hand, scratching his arm.

“Watch it!”

He feels it before he sees it. A change in the air around them. A sharp dip in temperature that has even Pete tugging his jacket closed. 

“I think this is it,” Pete murmurs, his confident gait slowing. The three of them fall silent. Ahead, the thin path they’ve been following opens out into a small clearing. Any trace of the summer evening has disappeared. A damp fog unfurls around them, crawling forward over a brick and iron-railed wall, over eight feet tall and disappearing out of view to both their left and right.

Even at this distance, the hum of the wards _feels_ loud and angry. It’s not even a noise. Robert’s never experienced magic like this. Never been able to actually sense it vibrating in the air around him. He’s struck with the urge to leave immediately. He feels a bit sick.

“We shouldn’t be here,” he says, but it comes out as a whisper. Carl nods in agreement, taking an abrupt step backwards and stumbling on a rock. 

Pete seems to shake off their disquiet, squaring his shoulders and looking again at the parchment in his hand. 

“Bollocks,” he says firmly. “We knew the wards protecting the grounds were strong. That’s why we’re going under them.” 

Robert feels a shiver snake down his spine. Seeing the wall, feeling its protective magic — it’s turned this whole thing from a crazy fun adventure into something real. Something dangerous.

“C’mon mate,” he groans, as Pete starts digging around in the undergrowth of a nearby tree. “This is stupid.” 

Carl is staring at them both, eyes wide, clutching at the strap of the camera bag strung over his shoulder. It holds his father’s wizarding camera, so they can prove they’ve been inside. His knuckles are white where he grips the dark leather.

Pete ignores them both, kicking away a football-sized rock and rummaging around in the exposed tree roots, some as thick as his torso. “Here it is!” he crows in triumph as he abruptly disappears.

“Fuck,” Carl curses quietly. 

“We could...” Robert trails off. He’s not sure what they can do now. Run back to Hogsmeade with their tails between their legs? 

“We can’t _leave_ him here,” Carl murmurs, disagreeing as if Robert’s said it out loud. He takes a deep breath and stumbles slightly as he shoves the foliage out of the way and follows Pete into the tunnel.

It’s even colder without the two of them and much more terrifying on his own, so Robert does the only thing he can think of and goes after his friends.

The tunnel starts out narrow, so he has to get down on his hands and knees and wiggle into it, a sudden wave of claustrophobia making his breathing shallow. But the walls quickly widen out enough that he can get up and walk crouched over, listening to Carl and Pete up ahead, their voices muffled, light from a _Lumos_ flashing and bouncing around. The tunnel widens further, and he straightens up as he joins them, dusting the earth off the knees of his trousers. 

“This is _sick_ ,” Carl whistles, shining his wand around the tunnel’s walls, smooth and even. “Someone must have made it with magic.”

Robert hums in agreement, although he can’t shake the dull, deadened feeling of the space they’re in. Dry and old, like no one has been here in a long time. Like they shouldn’t be here at all.

“C’mon,” Pete insists, striding off, the light of his _Lumos_ weakening as he moves away from them. 

Robert imagined the tunnel would be short — just enough to get them under the walls and into the school grounds — but they walk for what feels like a few hundred feet before it starts to narrow again, and the floor rises up toward the surface. They push out through a leafy patch of shrubs and into the fresh air. 

Robert’s seen loads of pictures of Hogwarts, of course, in his textbooks and in the portraits that are up all around the school in Cornwall. He feels like he could close his eyes and draw a pretty good approximation of the towers and spires just from memory. He thinks about the giant painting that hangs in the dining hall at Canonbury, with the sun sparkling off the lake and lazy drifts of white clouds floating past. Tiny Quidditch players flying on a pitch in the foreground. It always seemed like something out of the good kind of fairy tale. 

Nothing like this.

A jagged rockbed rises from the lake, the dark water lapping at it like an oil spill. It’s not even dinner time, and yet it feels like the sun hasn’t shone here in months. The forest to their left is a tangle of gnarled, blackened branches, and the leaves have fallen early, leaving damp piles of rotting vegetation on the ground. The air doesn’t feel fresh anymore, even in comparison to the stale atmosphere of the tunnel. It feels thick, like it’s settling in Robert’s lungs. But none of that matters because he can’t take his eyes off what’s right in front of him.

The castle.

The buff sandstone walls he remembers from all the pictures look a queasy, slick grey. Even from this distance, he can see places where the walls are damaged and crumbling, scarred from the final battle. But what makes him want to retch — to run, and to be absolutely unable to all at the same moment — are the windows. 

Or rather, the spaces where the windows should be.

Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry doesn’t have a single window anymore, the walls of the castle sealed up blind against the darkening sky.

It looks so _wrong_. A blank, impenetrable fortress hunkered down atop a rock.

“Take a ... take a picture,” Pete whispers urgently, flapping a hand at Carl, who startles and fiddles with the catches on his bag. 

“What _happened_ to it?” Robert asks, staring at the castle in horror.

Carl fumbles the camera out of the bag and holds it up with shaking hands, twisting at the lens.

“You need to take the cap off, moron,” Pete sighs, reaching for him. Carl goes to bat his hand away and Robert’s about to intervene, but before he can even think, there’s a sudden _CRACK_ to their left and he lets out an embarrassingly high squeak instead.

“What the —”

 _CRACK_. Again the noise comes, louder, closer. Like something very large and very fast is moving through the trees towards them. 

“It can’t be anything,” Pete scoffs. “The grounds were evacuated after the battle, there’s nothing still...”

Robert doesn’t want to wait to find out, scrabbling back into the undergrowth, trying to find the entrance to the tunnel, regretting every single choice that led him here.

CRACK, CRACK, _CRACKCRACKCRACK_.

Carl screams and shoves past him, dropping the camera and disappearing into the ground. Robert looks back in time to see Pete’s confident expression melt into one of terror, and beyond him, something enormous breaking through the trees.

Robert grabs the camera and runs.


	2. One

Harry approaches Grimmauld Place just as Ron rounds the corner, arms laden with takeaway bags.

“Thought Hermione was tired of that Indian,” he muses in place of a greeting. 

Ron shrugs.

“You’d know better than me. Not like she’s ever home. You just finishing work?”

“Yeah. Muggle-repelling wards at the Holyhead pitch.”

“Take long?”

 _Longer than it should have_ , Harry thinks with a grimace. The Harpies owner’s an oily billionaire used to getting everything he wants. After the third time Harry declined an after-work drink in the clubrooms, he became decidedly less friendly.

“Nah,” he shrugs, touching his hand to the front door and releasing the wards. He gestures for Ron to go ahead of him, kicking off his boots by the cloak rack. 

“ _Hi honey, we’re home_ ,” Ron sing-songs as he clomps noisily downstairs to the kitchen with the food. Harry goes upstairs to the library. Hermione won’t leave unless she’s actually dragged out, even for dinner. 

The light through the tall windows is still bright, the summer evening warm outside, and Harry moves across the room to let in some fresh air. The room feels stale. Hermione is sitting cross-legged on the floor, maps and plans fanned out around her, chewing on a quill. He wonders if she’s been there all day. It’s only been six weeks, but Harry almost can’t imagine his library without Hermione camped out in it. In the beginning, she just popped over to dig around for books in the old Black collection. But it progressed to being a much better meeting place for them all, given the unplottable location. Now she’s a semi-permanent fixture.

“Food’s here,” he says quietly, but she startles anyway, as if she’s surprised to see him in the room.

“You’re back early,” she frowns, looking up at the clock. He’s not, which she must realise as she takes in the time. “I should just —”

“You should just put it down and come and eat. The others will be here soon.” He reaches out a hand and just waits, staring her down until she takes it with a sigh and he hauls her gently to her feet. She’s still looking reluctantly at the paperwork on the ground. “Leave it,” he says with a warning tone and tugs her to follow him out of the room.

Ron has spread the takeaway containers across Harry’s kitchen table and is already spooning rice onto a plate. He looks up at Hermione with a smile, but she still seems distracted, reaching for a naan. 

“I’m sick of this Indian,” she complains absently, loading up a plate anyway as she sits and pulls a folded piece of parchment out of her pocket and keeps scribbling notes.

Ron rolls his eyes at Harry, who manages a smile.

“Just think. Two more days and we’ll be on our way.” He means it to sound cheering, but Hermione just frowns further and writes faster.

The late sun illuminates dust motes that dance across the kitchen. Since Kreacher retired it’s been harder to keep the place clean. He needs to hire a new elf. 

He needs to do a lot of things.

“How’s the sale going?” he asks Ron, hoping to prod some conversation into the silence, but Ron just shrugs.

“Busy, you know.”

Harry doesn’t, really. But getting Ron to talk about the Wheezes store is like trying to get blood out of a stone. Even when he asks direct questions, Ron gives him one-word answers, usually with some dismissive gesture. As if there’s no possible way Harry could genuinely be interested and is only asking to be polite. 

“Nothing like hobnobbing with the Quidditch elite,” he changes the subject, smirking at Harry. “Did you get to see them training? I swear, Harry, only you could turn a leave of absence from one glamorous job into another. The chance to see Kimberly Cracken up close on a broom...”

It’s an opportunity Harry should take. To explain to them both that it’s not a leave of absence. That it wasn’t even a formal resignation really. Just another foul-tempered fight with Robards; the last in a long line of them. But he’s not ready yet. To talk about how being an Auror proved to be nothing like he’d imagined. All the ways in which nothing about his post-War life has turned out quite the way they planned.

The roar of the Floo saves him at least from having to tell an outright lie. He leaves Ron and Hermione to finish their meals, stuffing another samosa in his mouth as he heads up the stairs to greet the others.

Neville and Hannah are first through. Neville’s hours at the apothecary are predictable but Hannah’s Healer training is intense. It’s taken her weeks to be able to confirm that she can get the time off for this, juggling her schedule with two other trainees. She collapses immediately onto a sofa and flings her feet up into Neville’s lap, giving him a baleful expression until he slips off her shoes and begins to knead.

The groan she lets out is almost indecent. “I’ve been at work for thirty-three hours,” she sighs. “Two different children threw up on me, and one hit me with a burst of wild magic that hexed my hand to my knee for a full hour until we worked out how to reverse it. Literally every muscle in my body is screaming in agony.”

Neville pats her shin.

“And no one has _any_ sympathy for me because they think I’m about to go on holiday to Majorca, and not on this stupid secret mission.”

“Think how impressed they’ll be when we come back, though,” Neville assures her, but is quelled with an exhausted scowl and resumes his foot massage in earnest.

Theo steps through next, dusting himself off and looking around furtively as if he’s about to face some kind of ambush.

Harry finds his weaselly, defensive stance endlessly irritating. But every time he complains about it to Hermione she tells him off. 

_Imagine what he’s had to go through,_ she always says, _proving himself at the Ministry_. Harry doesn’t really care how hard it’s been for Slytherins in the years after the War. Theo has a good job and he’s obviously trusted enough to be involved in all of this, so his life can’t be that bad. Harry just finds it a bit insulting. Theo’s been coming here to his home for over six weeks now and he still manages to look as though Harry might curse him through the floorboards at any moment.

The thought is sort of tempting.

“Would you like a drink?” he asks, trying to be a gracious host, Hermione’s imagined scolding still sounding in his ears. But Theo just shakes his head rapidly, swiping at his brow, which looks sweaty and pale. He better not be ill. The last thing any of them need is to try to attempt this whole thing on Pepper-Up.

Luna is, as ever, last to arrive. Her floor-length sundress looks suspiciously like it might be a refashioned valance, her pale arms bare. She hands Harry a pink crystal without explanation and drifts off to the kitchen. She returns a few minutes later with a jug of water, reclaims the crystal, and drops it into the jug, putting it up on a bookshelf.

Harry’s long since learned better than to ask.

Ron and Hermione follow Luna into the sitting room, Hermione having retrieved her trusty notebook and a customary armload of maps and plans from the library. Harry thinks any one of them could draw the floor plan of the entire castle top to bottom now, even with their eyes closed.

“Right, this is it. Last chance to go over everything and ask any questions.”

Hermione rolls out one of the maps of the school grounds, weighting the curling edges with books, and begins to recite the plan for the hundredth time.

Harry’s always found her amazing, but he can’t help but be impressed by how far she’s come now. In the ten years since the War, she’s racked up an astounding list of accomplishments. She refused job offers from both the Ministry and the Wizengamot, and threw herself fully into the study of history — often reciting a Muggle phrase about not being doomed to repeat it. She went from strength to strength: graduating from the wizarding college at Oxford with first-class honours, having her first book published only one year later, and then in a crowning achievement that would have made an eleven-year-old version of herself flush with pride, being asked to rewrite the classic text _Hogwarts: A History_.

A history that brought them all together in this room.

“The Fidelius remains in place until we return. The Ministry doesn’t want any details of this leaked, so we’re still unable to say anything about the journey to anyone except the people in this room.”

Hermione looks at Theo pointedly. Harry wonders if, as their Ministry liaison, he has a different set of obligations. His face looks somehow even sweatier, and he tugs awkwardly at his collar as he nods at Hermione and quickly glances away.

“Any questions?”

The room is quiet. It’s as if none of them can quite believe they’ve finally reached this point, after all the weeks of late-night preparation sessions, forced readings, and homework. Hermione drilling them over and over on the ritual and the casting and their respective roles. They’re as ready as they’ll ever be.

No one has anything to ask.

At this, Hermione softens a little, as if she’s finally realising that they’re reaching a milestone here too. They’ve done all they can. 

“I hope you all realise how important what we’re about to do is,” she says quietly. “Hogwarts is more than just a building, and it’s more than just a school.”

It’s true, Harry thinks. They’re not just doing this for sentimentality’s sake. In the decade since the War, Britain’s young witches and wizards have received a perfectly adequate education in the Ministry’s refitted facilities in Cornwall. _The Canonbury Academy (An Annex of the Hogwarts School)_ — Merlin, the hours of arguments he’d had to listen to early on about the name. The new school is fine. That’s not the reason they’re about to attempt this.

Something happened in the hours after the final battle, after the evacuation of the living and the dead. As the last of the survivors left the castle, and as the castle itself turned its wounded back on them all. The loss of Hogwarts has been felt by their entire community. And it’s something that needs to be put right.

“Okay, so we meet here Wednesday morning. You have your supply lists. Don’t overlook anything. If you can’t locate something on your list, owl me and let me know.”

The lists are terrifyingly long and detailed. Hermione has cast Extension Charms on each of their packs, but even with every item shrunk and lightened, they’ll be carrying enough supplies to keep an entire army on the march. Hermione has not budged an inch on this. 

“Our best-case scenario has us in and out in a day. I have absolutely no confidence that’s going to happen.”

Nothing like having an optimist for a leader.

In the end, the evening feels like something of an anticlimax. Harry supposes he expected some sort of rousing speech about courage and history and whatnot, rather than yet another recitation of how many pairs of socks they’ll need.

Theo’s the first to scarper, disappearing through the Floo almost as soon as Hermione wraps things up. Harry quirks an eyebrow at her and receives a very clear _don’t even start_ scowl in return. 

Hannah and Neville sit around for a bit, having a cup of tea and talking with Luna about their wedding plans. But eventually Hannah’s yawns become uncontrollable, and the three of them head through the Floo as well.

Hermione goes to flip open her notebook again, but Ron closes it firmly.

“We’re ready,” Harry tries to reassure her. “We’ve gone over every contingency. We’ve planned for every terrible thing that might happen. Hermione, the Ministry trusts you to do this and with good reason. No one understands the castle better than you. And we’ll be right by your side. Ready to do exactly what we’re told.” He winks at her, trying to get her to smile. And the edges of her mouth do soften a little. But she’s still wound tight, and Harry expects she will remain that way right up until they succeed.

“Go home. You’ve napped on that lumpy couch in my library too often. Get a proper night’s sleep.” 

Ron gives an exaggerated nod, as if this is something he’s said himself more than once, and helps her stack her notes and slide them into her satchel.

“It’s going to work.” Harry gives her a tight hug and claps Ron on the shoulder.

When they leave, the house feels deflated, as if the lively energy of the last few weeks has come to an abrupt end. All the late-night meetings, the endless plans mapped out on parchment and scrapped. The practiced spells. It’s all done now. Nothing left but the stale heat of a summer evening where the air doesn’t move freely enough. Harry’s shirt sticks to his back uncomfortably. 

They’ll do this. It will work. 

And then Harry will have to try to come up with a plan for what’s next.

~ 

Hermione’s late. Which makes no sense, because she’s usually in Harry’s library before he wakes up these days, and she’s always the one bouncing her knee and glaring at the clock waiting for all of the rest of them to arrive. So today — of all days — he’d expected her before dawn.

“Do you think she forgot?” Luna asks serenely, which forces a laugh out of Harry. 

Neville and Hannah are methodically shrinking and packing extra food into small long-life pouches. It seems like overkill to Harry. If they get hungry, they can just go to Hogsmeade. But Hermione has been insistent that they plan and prepare as if they’ll be out of contact for ten days. Through to the solstice moon. 

“At least we won’t need to buy groceries for a week,” Neville mutters. “We can just unshrink all this when we get home.”

Harry stands at the stove flipping eggs while Luna makes coffee. At least that’s what he _asked_ her to do, and she _is_ standing near the kettle casting, but the aroma coming from that general direction has a decidedly astringent sting to it that’s starting to make his eyes water. 

“Sunny-side up, mate,” Ron says as he comes down into the kitchen, patting Harry on the back and reaching for a plate. He picks up a coffee mug from beside Luna, but then sniffs deeply and puts it back down with a frown.

“Where’s Hermione?” Harry asks in confusion.

Ron looks around the assembled group in surprise. “She’s not here? She got an owl late last night and went out. There was a note this morning saying I should meet her here.”

“Maybe the Ministry was fretting about something. Theo’s not here either,” Hannah muses, tugging the straps down on her pack and testing the weight.

“They better not be getting cold feet. I can’t live with us having to wait another solstice cycle,” Ron sighs. 

It’s not the first time Harry has thought that his friend’s heart doesn’t really seem in this. He’s supportive, of course. And fiercely proud of Hermione. But there’s very little real enthusiasm for the whole project. Harry gets the sense that Ron would far rather they stayed home and set less ambitious goals for themselves.

He hears the woosh of the Floo upstairs.

“That’ll be them now.”

Harry turns back to the stove, flicking off the heat and sliding the last of the eggs onto a plate.

“What time do you call this...the _fuck_?!”

Ron’s tone turns from joking to suddenly ugly and aggressive. Harry spins around.

It’s Hermione all right, but it’s not pasty, sweaty Theo Nott with her in Harry’s kitchen. It’s Draco bloody Malfoy.

He’s standing slightly behind Hermione, as if she’s assured him she’s going to fight this battle solo. Or maybe that’s just his default posture: coward.

Harry’s stunned to see him. It’s been over ten years.

Malfoy and his parents fled Britain after the final battle. It took the Auror’s Death Eater Retrieval Squad two years to bring Lucius in, finally tracking him to an Austrian villa. Three years after that, Narcissa and Draco’s names were finally removed from the wanted lists — part of a cleanout that re-prioritised resources after they’d both been found not guilty of more serious crimes _in absentia_.

But even with his mugshot no longer blinking at Harry from the crowded wall at Auror Headquarters, Malfoy hadn’t returned to Britain.

Until now.

Harry stares at him. He’s tall and thin. Too thin. His face is gaunt and tired looking. His bright blond hair is chopped short, in a haphazard sort of way that might be stylish, but Harry wouldn’t really have a clue. He’s wearing plain, dark Muggle clothes that make him look even paler than Harry remembers. 

“Draco is going to take Theo’s place,” Hermione announces, lifting her chin and daring any of them to disagree with her.

An ugly silence descends on the kitchen. Harry puts the plate of eggs down on the table with a noisy thunk.

“You can’t be serious.”

Ron is staring at Hermione as if this is some sort of prank, and Harry supposes it should seem more strange that Hermione obviously hasn’t mentioned this to _Ron_ before now. As far as Harry knows, no one has seen Malfoy since the war. How has Hermione even _found_ him?

“Our options are limited,” she spits out, her voice full of tightly-coiled frustration. “We have to leave today, and Theo won’t come.”

“Why, though?” Hannah asks, confused rather than confrontational. “He’s been coming to these planning meetings for weeks now. He’s never expressed any doubts.”

“And surely the Ministry will have something to say about it. I mean, he’s the Ministry liaison, right? They’re not going to be happy replacing him with...” Neville trails off as he gestures in Malfoy’s direction without looking at him.

Harry’s sure those objections make sense on some level, but they don’t come anywhere the top of _his_ list. 

“The ritual requires a Slytherin,” Hermione says mulishly. “It was hard enough to find the first one. We can’t start over auditioning them now.”

It hadn’t really occurred to Harry that it might have been hard to convince a Slytherin to participate. Theo had come as part of the package the first time Hermione had laid out her plans. None of them had questioned it, given the Ministry’s involvement. He tries to think who else she might have approached first. Zabini has some job as a PR hack in the Wizengamot. Parkinson works at the _Prophet_. Neither of them seems a likely candidate. The truth is, most of the Slytherins with money or connections did exactly what the Malfoys did after the War. They left.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Neville says, calmer than Ron, who is now a deep magenta and spluttering in the corner, looking at Hermione as if he doesn’t recognise her at all. “I mean, setting aside the fact that you’re just springing this on us now, he hasn’t been here for all the preparation. He doesn’t know the plans, Hermione.”

That should be the end of it. Hermione’s been like a drill sergeant with them all about preparation. They’ve practised over and over, for weeks. There’s no way she can realistically suggest they substitute _anyone_ in now, let alone Draco Malfoy.

“He doesn’t need to,” she retorts, provoking a howl of disbelief from Ron. “He _doesn’t_. The rest of us know everything inside out and backward. All Draco has to be able to do is participate in the final ritual, and I can teach him that on the way. We already started last night.”

Harry looks at Malfoy, who is staring up out the kitchen windows, his face impassive. He seems uninterested by the whole conversation, which is somehow even more infuriating.

“We can’t _trust_ him,” seethes Ron, and even this doesn’t seem to provoke any response. “We _barely_ trusted Theo and that’s mostly because the Ministry does. _This_ traitor has been on the run for ten years, and before that was on the _other side_. You’re the one always telling us this whole stupid plan could be dangerous, and now you want to bring _this_ liability along?!”

It’s the word _stupid_ that causes Hermione to flinch, but she doesn’t back down.

“It has to be now. It has to be today. This is our only option.”

“I don’t understand what the rush is,” Hannah asks, still the puzzled voice of reason in the room. “I mean, it will be annoying to not do it now when we’re all ready, but we can wait another cycle. Six months is nothing, and it will give you time to make sure Malfoy’s really the...best option.”

“He is,” Luna says suddenly, and Harry had forgotten she was standing behind him.

“How can you say that?” Ron hisses, wheeling to face her, still apoplectic. “He kept you locked in his _fucking dungeon_!”

At this, Malfoy finally looks away from the window and back at the rest of them, but he still doesn’t offer any kind of response.

“That wasn’t Draco’s fault,” Luna says with a shrug. “Besides, Hermione is right, we need to go today.”

“Why, though?” Hannah asks again, and Harry’s pretty sure she’s thinking that if they wait six months she can _actually_ go to Majorca. Harry would probably go with her. Anything to avoid spending any more time in Malfoy’s company.

Hermione sighs and reaches into the pocket of her cloak for a piece of folded parchment and gives it to Harry. It’s a Ministry memo, dated two months ago.

“You can pass that around,” she says. “Someone leaked it to Luna. The Ministry has scheduled a permanent demolition date for Hogwarts.”

Neville sucks in a breath. It is shocking, to see the words in black and white like this. Harry realises that spending the last six weeks living and breathing the maps and the plans has had him thinking about the castle a lot. The idea that it might simply be destroyed is hard to wrap his mind around.

“They’re giving us one shot at this. We do it now, or the castle is lost forever.”

It feels outrageous, that it can have come to this. But Harry knows as well as the rest of them that there’s no indefinite timeline. Hogwarts is a blot on the magical landscape: dangerous and unpredictable. The Ministry can’t just leave it there forever, hoping that the wards hold. As it is, they’re faced with adventurers and tabloid journalists and school children on dares, all trying to force their way in to take pictures and try their luck. It’s no surprise, really, that the Ministry would let Hermione lead this last attempt, and then that would be the end.

“He swears an Unbreakable —” Neville starts, reluctantly, and Ron lets out a groan that suggests he knows he’s already lost. “He swears that he’ll do _everything_ he can to make the mission a success.”

Hermione and Malfoy exchange an unreadable look, but then he just turns back to them all and nods, arching an eyebrow at Harry as if he’s asking a question. Harry feels the back of his neck heat. He looks away.

Harry hates how _quiet_ he is. Malfoy always, _always_ had something to say.

Ron is still fuming and insists on performing the Vow himself, grabbing at Malfoy’s wrist and spitting out the words. Malfoy responds calmly, his voice deeper than Harry remembers it. 

The eggs are cold. Harry isn’t hungry anymore anyway.

~

Flooing to the Broomsticks is deemed far too conspicuous for a group supposed to be doing something covertly. Even ten years on, anytime Harry, Ron, and Hermione are together in public there’s always someone paying too much attention, and then inevitably a nonsense follow-up story in the _Prophet_ the next day. Last week, they’d just walked past an organic grocer and _Golden Trio Goes Gluten Free?_ took up six column inches.

So they take a Portkey, all seven of them crowded around to get a grip on the battered-looking egg carton, packs on their backs like an unhappy scout troop with an interloper in their midst. Hermione’s coordinates land them at the start of the path Robert Gallagher and his friends had followed. 

Luna was the one who first told them Gallagher’s story. One of his friends had been admitted to the Janus Thickey Ward with mental exhaustion; the other had been whisked off by his parents to Durmstrang to complete his schooling. But Robert had come to Luna hoping _The Quibbler_ would print their story. 

Theo dismissed the whole thing as nonsense. The Ministry had investigated it fully, he assured them. The boys had been drinking, the whole thing was nothing but a prank. The blurry photo was a hoax, and definitely not the out-of-focus leg of an Acromantula. “The grounds were evacuated. We’d know if there were giant bloody spiders roaming around.”

Hermione didn’t disagree with him, but nevertheless decided that they’d follow the same path onto the school grounds. “It makes sense,” she said, pointing at one of her many maps. “It’s the shortest distance from the boundary and we can set up our base camp down here by the lake.”

In Harry’s memories, he mostly associates Hogsmeade with winter. Long summer days growing up were spent at Privet Drive or the Burrow, so it’s always a surprise to remember that the little village has another life, surrounded by green, bright with heather on the hills. 

The path they follow is crowded with trees and bushes, completely overgrown. Ron leads, taking out his continued frustration at the whole Malfoy situation on errant branches with snappish wand movements.

“You don’t actually need to clear-cut it,” Neville protests, as yet another tree limb goes sailing off to the side.

Harry is last in line, walking behind Malfoy. 

Everything about him seems out of place, in his nondescript Muggle jeans and hiking boots, the straps of his pack light against the moss green of his long-sleeved t-shirt. Just the idea of Malfoy in a t-shirt would have seemed preposterous to Harry only yesterday. 

“Look,” Luna calls, stepping off the path into a patch of shrubbery, and the group halts abruptly. Harry puts up a hand in front of himself to stop from stumbling into Malfoy. His palm glances off his pack but Malfoy doesn’t look around. Harry’s surprised, expecting at least a sneer if not the actual threat of physical violence.

Luna emerges from the greenery with a Canonbury Academy scarf.

“Robert wasn’t making it up.”

Hermione’s mouth twists.

“Could be anyone’s,” Hannah cautions. “Kids have been sneaking up here for years.”

“And even if it’s Gallagher’s, it doesn’t mean they made it into the grounds,” Harry notes. “They could just have easily been drinking here while they cooked up their story.”

Luna says nothing, but she rolls up the scarf and tucks it into a pocket on the side of her pack.

It’s only a few hundred feet more before the path opens out and they’re faced with a small clearing and the boundary wall itself. Harry feels the cold lick of the protective wards even from several paces away. It’s an uncomfortable combination. Something like the Muggle-repellent charms he’s been using himself in his security work. But something else too: darker, more organic. Much older. 

Malfoy flexes his hands into fists and then relaxes them. Harry wonders how much of it he can detect. What it feels like passing over his skin.

Hermione digs out her notebook and consults a small ornate dial in her hand: a kind of magical compass that no doubt does seven other things besides indicating their direction. She steps neatly around a patch of stinging nettles as she eyes each of the trees near them in turn. 

“Here,” she concludes finally.

As they gather around her, the entrance to the tunnel becomes clear. As does the small sign reading _Sealed by the authority of the Minister for Magic_ affixed to the tree trunk.

“I thought they said the whole thing was a hoax,” Ron snorts. 

“I guess they didn’t want anyone else trying it.” Neville crouches down to push some leaves away from the mouth of the tunnel. It looks cramped, like they’ll have to crawl to get through it. There’s nothing appealing about that idea to Harry. 

Hermione begins to cast a series of unwarding spells. Harry only listens with half an ear. They’re standard spells, but require the passphrase of whatever Ministry employee set them. Theo must have given them to her. Sure enough, it doesn’t take long before a shimmer effect passes over and a puff of stale air drifts out from the tunnel.

“Righto,” says Ron, kneeling down immediately. It seems his general annoyance is just going to manifest itself in him being headstrong all day. He disappears into the ground with a wriggle, Hermione on his heels.

Harry stands back to wait as each member of their little group takes off their pack and pushes it into the tunnel ahead of them. 

Malfoy looks up at the sun, raising itself into the sky above the trees around them, and then down at the dark hole in the ground with a sigh. He doesn’t say anything, even as Harry waits for some complaint, before sliding off his pack and crawling forward.

Harry gives him a head start before he follows.

The tunnel is dry and less filthy than he’d feared, but much longer, and it only takes a few minutes before the unease he always feels about being in dark, confined spaces starts to roar in his ears.

He’s grateful to hear the voices of the others up ahead, clearly out in the open air again, and hurries the rest of the way.

And almost immediately he wishes that he hadn’t.

The view of Hogwarts is exactly as Robert Gallagher described it to Luna: deformed and malevolent, looming over the lake like an ugly alternate-universe version of the home Harry once loved.

The summer sun, which had heated the back of his neck as they’d hiked up to the boundary, now has a weak and faded quality to it, as if it’s trying to shine through some sort of magical barrier and just doesn’t have the power. Harry shivers.

“It’s worse than I imagined,” whispers Hannah. 

Harry stares at it in horror. He can’t escape a sense of guilt, somehow. That the castle has been here the whole time, wounded and lost, and they’d just abandoned it.

Which isn’t true, of course. The Ministry had tried again and again in the early years. Teams of professors. Experts from Europe and North America. And when those attempts failed, they were followed by fortune-seekers and fame-chasers, before the Ministry ruled that the next generation of Gilderoy Lockharts weren’t going to make a name for themselves getting badly injured at the school and sealed the grounds up like a vault.

But Harry can’t shake the sense that _they_ should have tried before now. That _he_ should have been here and seen it for himself. That he owes Hogwarts something, after bringing Death to its very doors.

Neville eyes the forest alongside them warily. “If Robert was right about this, there’s every chance he was right about the Acromantula as well.”

Ron fairly jumps at that, shouldering his pack quickly. “We should go then. No need to hang around here.”

And so they fall into single file again, making their way through the scrubby undergrowth and down towards the lake.

It’s early afternoon by the time they reach the shore, the weakened sun high overhead. Harry looks out over the dark, oily-looking water and wonders if the giant squid is still somewhere beneath the surface. He crouches and dips his fingers in, shocked at how cold it is. 

They eat sandwiches that Luna pulls from her pack and then continue their walk around the lake’s edge to a flat, grassy area a few hundred feet from the boathouse. When they were students at the school, they came here to lie around while they crammed for exams, and it seems as good a spot as any to set up camp.

The four wizarding tents spring up with ease, pennants snapping in the light breeze. It’s only as Hannah and Neville disappear into theirs to unpack that Harry realises he’s supposed to share with Theo, and that means —

“I’ll share with Draco,” Luna announces, holding back the flap of her tent and making eye contact only with Malfoy. He hesitates for a brief second, but his impassive expression doesn’t so much as flicker. He picks up his pack and heads inside.

Harry feels a twist of relief and something else — frustration perhaps at this stony-faced version of his childhood rival — as he enters his own tent alone. He doesn’t do much to unpack, pulling out spare sets of clothing and unshrinking them into a pile on his bed, and tugging off his sweaty t-shirt before throwing some cold water on his face and finding a clean one. He’d expected to feel energetic at this point, excited about the prospect of the challenge they were tackling. But being here now with the castle looming over them like this has just made him uneasy.

Once settled, everyone regroups around a firepit that Neville and Ron hastily construct, levitating some fallen logs from a nearby stand of trees.

Hermione is champing at the bit to get started right away, but no one else is in favour.

“It was a long walk, we’re tired, and frankly, seeing the castle looking like that,” Ron waves over his shoulder at the hulking silhouette, “is a little bit overwhelming. I vote we rest up, eat a good meal, get some sleep and start fresh.”

Ron’s irritated demeanour hasn’t faded, and Harry still feels the reluctance coming off him in waves. Still, he doesn’t disagree.

“Ron’s right,” Neville says. “While we should have plenty of hours of daylight left, we can all see that the sun isn’t doing what it’s supposed to here. We don’t want to start out and find that the atmosphere turns on us. Let’s wait this evening, work out where we’re at, and begin first thing.”

Hermione’s expression is pinched, but she doesn’t fight them on it. She’s been the one since the beginning to caution that the whole project might take them time, and now, faced with the cold hard reality of what they’re up against, there seems even less reason to rush.

“Fine. But we’re starting at daybreak.”

“Whenever that is,” Luna murmurs, looking at the eerie shadows cast by the castle above them.

“Righto, campfire,” Harry announces, refusing to let them slip completely into negativity before they even begin. He begins to wander around the wooded area behind the tents, picking up handfuls of kindling.

He’s got a decent armful when he hears behind him, “There’s a spell for that.” Suddenly all of the small twigs and bits of dead wood around him float gently up from the ground and drift away from him. He spins around to find them stacking themselves in a tidy pile in front of Malfoy.

Harry wants to be exasperated but it’s a neat trick.

“You never struck me as an outdoorsman,” he says with an unkind smirk.

“Needs, must,” Malfoy snaps back and turns on his heel, levitating the bundle toward the tents and leaving Harry standing alone in the trees. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s missed an opportunity. Their first words to each other after so long could probably have stood to be a little less petty.

By some silent mutual agreement the group adopts a slightly forced summer camp air, grilling sausages and competing in a stone-skipping competition. Luna produces marshmallows, waving away Hermione’s interrogation about them not being on the list and what they might have replaced in her pack. Harry feels like they’re all trying a little too hard to have a good time, to pretend that the reason they’re all here isn’t looming over them in the gathering dusk.

Harry doesn’t like anything about it. Least of all Draco Malfoy’s presence. Even if he’s doing everything he can to make that presence almost undetectable. He’s so _quiet_ , sitting slightly back from the fire, keeping to himself. Hermione’s notes are spread out before him on the ground, and he’s hunched over them studying like a diligent student, not someone who’s been dragged along on a madcap and extremely dangerous scheme at the drop of a hat.

Harry manages to catch Hermione’s eye and gesture toward the lake’s edge. She joins him for a stroll.

“I don’t like this,” he says abruptly. “We’ve planned too carefully, for too long, to throw a spanner in the works like this at the eleventh hour.”

“You mean Draco,” she says slowly, as if she’s taking a minute to catch up.

“It doesn’t make any sense that he’d want to help. Where did you even find him?”

Hermione kicks at a pinecone that skitters away along the path in front of them.

“He’s been back for a while, six months or so. He contacted me about a junior academic position at the College. He wasn’t suited for it, but it meant I knew how to find him yesterday when Theo pulled out.”

Harry wonders what not being _suited_ _for it_ means, but doesn’t ask.

“He wants to re-establish himself in Britain legitimately, I think. So in that sense, I’m taking advantage of him a little. He’s motivated to help us succeed because of the positive impact it will have on his reputation.”

Harry thinks about Malfoy, sitting quietly by himself, saying nothing. He doesn’t seem particularly motivated by anything at all, other than disappearing into the scenery.

“What happened to Theo?”

“Redirected to another project at the Ministry, it seems,” she says, with a sour expression.

“But —”

“Look, you don’t have to like Draco, or even speak to him if you don’t want to. You just have to concentrate on your part of the plan. He’s always been clever, he’ll learn the ritual steps quickly. And there’s absolutely no upside for him if we fail.”

Harry’s train of thought gets derailed. Hermione’s right, of course. They only trusted Theo because he was assigned to them by the Ministry. Malfoy’s primary motivation has always been his own self-interest. And right now, his self-interest lines up squarely with what they’re here to achieve. Harry doesn’t need to make friends with him. He doesn’t even really need to be polite, so long as Malfoy does what he’s told.

“None of this is ideal, Harry,” she says with a sigh, patting his arm and turning them back toward the little camp. “But it’s what we have. This is too important not to try.”

Later, as Harry shucks off his jeans and slides into bed, he thinks about the last time he’d seen Draco Malfoy. Right here on the school grounds. He’d watched his mother clutch at him desperately as his parents hurried him away. He remembers the way Draco had glanced back over his shoulder at Harry just once, and he remembers the look of relief on his tear-stained face.

~

Hermione wasn’t kidding about starting at daybreak. Harry feels like he’s only just nodded off when her voice pierces his dreams, calling through the wall of the tent.

“I’ll come in there and shake you if you’re not up in five minutes. Don’t think I won’t.”

He groans, rubbing his eyes. It doesn’t feel bright enough to be dawn yet, but when he opens the canvas flap, he sees that the pale sun has crept above the horizon, watery and only giving off a dim light. Ron is prodding the fire back to life, snatching the coffee pot away from Luna before she can embark on any more experiments and gently suggesting she turn the sausages instead.

Harry retreats back into his tent, showering quickly, his mind more alert now as he runs over their plans for the day. Hermione decided their most likely point of entry would be the boathouse, where as first years they’d come into the castle under the cliffs for the first time, wide-eyed and wondering. 

He dresses, lacing up his boots and double-checking the contents of his pack. The tents they’ll leave here, until they better understand what they’re dealing with inside.

Breakfast is a subdued affair. Everyone seems to share the same grim, determined energy — a desire to just get on with it.

Their reconnoiter reveals the boathouse to be utterly flooded, the level of the lake well above the moss-covered lantern on the roof beam outside.

Harry tries not to be put off by a setback at the very first step, but it doesn’t seem like a very good sign.

Hermione, however, seems nonplussed. “We’ll swim in. Neville has gillyweed.”

And he does, tasked in advance with coming up with a list of every conceivable plant or potion that might be useful to them. He crouches down beside his bag, looking through a selection of shrunken pouches before locating the correct one.

Hermione, meanwhile, unzips her jeans.

“Wait, what?” Ron sputters, catching her hand.

“Well, I’m not swimming in there in my clothes. Swimsuits weren’t on my packing list, despite you all mocking me for its comprehensiveness. It’s not like I care about any of you seeing me in my underwear.”

Ron flushes beetroot, right to his hairline. “But —”

“Merlin, all right”, she rolls her eyes, “I’ll transfigure a perfectly good bra and pants into a bikini if it makes you feel like there’s a difference”.

Behind him, Malfoy lets out a small snort, which might be the first noise Harry’s heard him make today. 

Ron wheels on him, scowling. “You can keep your eyes to yourself and all.”

At this, Malfoy laughs properly. Harry remembers all too well his mocking derisive chuckles, but this is an unfamiliar, delighted sound.

“Trust me, I have no interest in your wife’s body. Or any other woman’s for that matter.”

Harry somehow bites the inside of his cheek at that, wincing at the sting. He’s not sure what’s more shocking. The fact that Malfoy is gay, or the casual way he said it, as if it’s easy for him. When it still takes Harry real effort to screw up the courage with people he doesn’t know well.

Ron glances from Harry to Malfoy, his mouth opening and closing in silence. Harry can practically see the cogs turning in his head as he tries to avoid offending Harry while finding a way to mortally insult Malfoy at the same time. It proves too difficult, and he settles on a defeated, “You just watch it, mate.” 

Hermione, now down to her underwear, touches the fabric with her wand and lets it shimmer and shift into a plain black swimsuit.

“I don’t think I’ll change mine,” Luna says, looking down at her own lacy pink bra and voluminous bow-covered bloomers. She looks like a vintage pin-up. Harry suspects the outfit will not fare well in the lake water and says as much.

“Perhaps you’re right, Harry,” she sighs, transfiguring it into a neon orange one-piece that makes her look like a cartoon fish.

Harry is just grateful for his own plain black cotton boxer briefs.

He’s less grateful when he looks up from crouching by his pack and catches sight of Malfoy’s long pale legs emerging from his jeans. He’s left his t-shirt on, and Harry suddenly feels his own nakedness too keenly. He concentrates on tucking his socks carefully inside his boots. 

They each roll their clothes and shrink them, adding them to their packs, and then seal the packs tightly with layers of waterproofing charms. 

Neville passes out the Gillyweed.

“Once we chew it,” Harry says quickly, refusing to look at Malfoy opposite. “It happens quite quickly. And it’s not very comfortable. As soon as you feel the gills on your neck you’ll want to go into the water.”

Hannah screws up her face in discomfort, but Luna just turns the weed over in her palm with interest. 

“Visibility in the lake is really bad, you can’t see much in front of your face. We should do something to keep together.”

Neville unspools a length of rope looped on the side of his pack. “I reckon if we all keep a hold of this we’d be okay?”

Harry nods.

“And there are Grindylows. Or at least there were, back then. Unfriendly little bastards. I couldn’t cast properly because I couldn’t speak, but _Relashio_ seemed to fire hot water at them.”

“There aren’t supposed to be any creatures left. They were all meant to have been evacuated.” Hermione says uncertainly, looking out at the dark water. They all know what she’s thinking. If Robert Gallagher had told the truth about the tunnel and the state of the castle, there’s no reason to suspect he was lying about the Acromantula either.

“Well, better to be prepared than not, I guess.”

They shoulder their packs and wade into the icy lake, each holding the rope spaced out between them.

Harry chews his handful of Gillyweed, the rubbery slimy taste just as unpleasant as he remembers. Equally unpleasant: the sudden suffocating feeling of being a stranger on dry land, as the gills reappear in his neck. Reacting immediately to the pain, and only vaguely aware of the discomfort of those around him, he tugs on his section of the rope and dives straight into the lake. 

The cold water is a blissful relief, even as dark and impenetrable as it is. He blinks a few times, flapping his newly-flippered feet and adjusting to the buoyancy. He waits for the others, keenly aware that with such limited visibility, it would be easy to get lost, even with the rope between them. The gloomy light and forests of tangled black weed are uneasily familiar. He hates being back here again.

Hannah is the strongest swimmer even without any magical enhancements and so she takes the lead. Harry feels a gentle tug on the rope in his hand and kicks off to follow. 

It’s a short distance, a few hundred feet at most, but the silence is eerie and feels thick in his ears. The weeds give way to slick, sharp-looking rock as they approach the boathouse. Harry thinks back to his first time here, the way the little boats had carried them across the water. How anxious and excited he’d been, staring up at the castle rising above him like something out of a dream. Now he just feels uneasy.

Hannah leads their little chain carefully, swimming over the uneven ground. Soon Harry can see submerged below him the steps where the boats tie up. The gap between the roof of the boathouse and where they’re swimming narrows, becoming more like a tunnel. Up ahead he can make out the passageway in the rock that will take them up into the castle. 

Harry waits, treading water slowly until the Gillyweed dosage Neville carefully measured out for each of them starts to wear off, the pain in his neck increasing as the gills start to disappear, and then he lifts his head above the surface of the water, careful not to knock it on the roof. He takes a long breath, feeling his lungs stretch and reacclimate. The air is dank, and there’s barely any light. It almost seems darker than it did below the water. Each of the others gradually pop up like corks, bobbing around him and rubbing at their necks as they take experimental breaths.

“Well that’s a fucking horrible sensation,” Ron complains, spitting out a piece of lake weed he’d almost managed to swallow. “Let’s not do that again.”

With the Gillyweed no longer protecting them, Harry feels the cold of the water keenly. They need to get out and get dry. Ahead of them the top steps emerge from the lapping water, meeting the double oak doors to the Castle.

Hannah is closest, stroking easily over to the first step and reaching up to pull herself out of the water. But with a sudden jerk she slips, almost violently, with a splash that sends her back under the surface. She bobs up again coughing.

“Are you okay?” Neville calls out with concern.

“Yeah,” she coughs. “It’s slippery, we need to be careful.”

Hermione pulls her wand from where she’d holstered it on her arm and casts a _Lumos_. Nothing happens. She tries again, but the space stays dark.

“Let me.” Ron pushes his wand up from under the water, but the _Lumos_ does nothing.

It’s really cold in the water.

“We can’t stay in this, we need to get out,” he says, swimming toward the step beside Hannah and carefully reaching up to climb out. It’s almost as if someone shoves him; his locked elbows suddenly give and he finds himself sliding abruptly straight back into the lake.

He splutters back up, coughing.

“It’s not just slippery,” he spits out. “There’s something repelling us.”

Hermione tries to cast a Bluebell Flame, but again nothing happens. She runs through an irritated-sounding list of simple spells, but nothing works.

“ _Festiva Lumina,_ ” Luna cries, her voice ringing out clearly in the damp chamber. Suddenly, all around them, tiny coloured Christmas tree lights blink into existence, dancing along the edges of the rock in bright reds and greens.

They all stare at her in surprise.

“I just learned that one, last holidays,” Luna explains. “It made the office look so much more cheery and seasonal.”

“Can you do anything else?” Hermione asks, her teeth starting to chatter. Luna cast _Lumos_ , _Sonorus_ and then a completely unnecessary _Aguamenti_ in quick succession, none of which produce any results.

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” Hermione sighs. “But it means that we have some magic. We just have to try everything we can think of to get up these steps.”

And so they float there in the cold, lit only by twinkling fairy lights, casting every spell they can think of.

Neville manages a rock-cutting spell he used renovating the garden at Grimmauld Place a few years back, and cuts some footholds into the wall. But no sooner than he manages to haul himself up out of the water, the rock crumbles away, dumping him unceremoniously back with a splash.

Ron succeeds with a spell that lays stone over water, something he’d had to perfect the second time George had mucked around with putting down a commemorative swamp in the Wheezes store. He makes it up two makeshift steps before they melt back into muck and he slips all the way down.

Hannah is the one to put a stop to it. “Our body temperatures are too low. We can’t keep this up or we won’t be strong enough to swim back out.”

Hermione seems for a second like she might be about to object, but Hannah’s look brooks no real argument. Hannah’s Healer training trumps whatever overall frustration they’re all feeling at the setback. She helps Neville slip off his pack, holding it above the water while he portions out more Gillyweed for each of them.

The slimy, bulbous feel of it is almost more than Harry can bear, but the sooner they get out of this place the better. He clutches the rope and dives.

Once ashore, their magic is again unaffected. Ron flares the campfire up to a roaring height, and Hannah immediately wraps all of them in fluffy, heated blankets transfigured out of towels. Harry hadn’t realised quite how numb his fingers and toes had gotten until the heat starts to return to them and the restored bloodflow almost stings.

“So, not in and out in a day, then,” Neville says glumly, passing out mugs of hot cocoa.

“We can’t get discouraged at the first obstacle,” Hermione insists, wrapping both hands around her mug and drawing closer to the fire. “We learned a lot today.”

“We learned that the castle definitely does not want to let anyone in,” Malfoy says with a deadpan expression, casting a spell to dry his hair. Harry watches it fall back into shape without effort and feels a twinge of envy.

“We learned that the lake is really fucking cold,” Ron complains with a shiver, tugging his blanket closer around him.

“We _learned_ ,” Hermione corrects, assuming her lecturing voice, all too familiar from their planning meetings over the last few weeks, “that there are wards that will allow us to use some spells and not others.”

“Simple things didn’t seem to work very well,” Luna agrees. “None of us could cast a _Lumos_ or a basic drying spell.”

“And the castle seemed to adapt,” Hannah goes on. “Luna’s Christmas light spell held. But anytime something got us closer to the door, it was as if the castle fought back against the threat.”

Harry doesn’t like the idea that Hogwarts might see them as a threat.

“It wasn’t really trying to hurt us, though.” Hermione produces her notebook and begins scratching away furiously. “I mean, it was more like the way the girls’ dormitory stairs turned to slides when boys climbed them.”

“Really?” Malfoy asks, puzzled. “Our dorms were all on the same level. The doors would grow strangler vines,” he goes on, by way of explanation.

“Terribly old-fashioned,” Luna says with a smile. “I never had any trouble visiting my girlfriends.”

Ron chokes on a mouthful of cocoa. Harry feels his face heat for no good reason.

“I mean, it was almost a gentle repellent, right?” Hermione continues, oblivious to the conversation around her. “Like just tipping us back into the lake each time. It didn’t seem to be actually fighting us. That’s got to be a good sign.”

“Quite a reach for a silver lining, Granger,” Malfoy says with a snort. “We still don’t know how to get in.”

“Actually, maybe we do,” Neville says suddenly. “I mean, I never used it myself but there was a way round the dormitory stair spell. The older boys used to talk about it.”

Ron sits up a little straighter. “He’s right. George took great delight in only telling me about it after the War.”

Then he looks embarrassed, glancing in Hermione’s direction. “I mean, not that I’d needed it earlier I just —”

She waves it away impatiently. “What was the spell, do you remember?”

Ron screws up his face and thinks. “I’ll just send him a Patronus —”

“No.”

“I don’t need to tell him why I’m asking, I’ll just —”

“No. Can you remember it or not?”

Ron scowls, thinking, his fingers tapping a pattern on his knee. 

“Wait, yes. I remember. We were watching a movie that had those Muggle flying machines in them.” He makes a spinning gesture with his finger.

“Helicopters,” Harry supplies helpfully. 

“Yes! And I said that they call them _Copters_ because the Muggle police use them, and they’re called _Cops_.” Ron seems proud to have recalled these facts.

“And George said that was bullshit and the word was actually _Helico_ , which means spiral, and _Pter_ , like Pteradactyl. The flying dragon bird thing Muggles believe in.”

“Is that true?” Hannah asks in surprise.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ron says impatiently. “George said he always remembered that because _Helico_ is the spell to recreate a spiral staircase when it’s turned into a slide!”

He digs around in the pile next to him for a flattish piece of wood, and casts the spell. Sure enough, the wood curls around on itself into a tight coil, with small steps cut into each turn.

“And then he mocked me for a full month for never having needed it.” Ron blushes furiously.

Hermione grabs him in an impulsive hug and kisses him on the cheek. “This is brilliant.”

“We don’t know that it will work any better than anything we tried today,” Harry says cautiously.

“It’s a place to start,” Luna says, reassuring Ron with a pat on his shoulder. 

They spend another hour or so brainstorming ways to make the second attempt more productive before the weak light all but disappears. The castle broods over them and there are dark clouds gathering on the other side of the lake. Even having dried and warmed his clothes and heated his blankets, Harry still feels awful as he gets into bed. 

In his dreams, under the lake, all of his fellow travellers are being held captive by the Merpeople. Harry struggles to release each of them in turn until only Malfoy is left and then he doesn’t know what to do. He treads water, looking at Malfoy’s closed eyes, the way his hair seems impossibly bright in the dark gloom of the water.

The next day, that’s the only part of the dream Harry remembers.


	3. Two

Having tossed and turned all night, constantly shifting to try to stretch a crick out of his neck or his back, Harry’s almost grateful for sunrise, even given what the day promises.

The group is sombre and careful in their preparations, each donning transfigured wetsuits wrapped in as many heating charms as they can think of. They have no way of knowing if the magic will hold, or if the castle will turn on them, but it should buy them some time.

“Speed is going to be key,” Hermione reiterates. 

They decide to divide into two groups. Hermione makes them all demonstrate their best door-opening skills, conjuring up a heavy wooden door in the front wall of her tent for them to practice on.

Ron shrugs and says he only knows _Alohomora_ , looking at the rest of them as if it would be weird to need anything else. Harry fires off a raft of Auror-designed forced-entry spells, all of which fling Hermione’s door slamming against the canvas. Ron gives him a look, one side of his mouth twisted up a little meanly, and Harry feels bad, as if he’s been caught out showing off.

It’s just his job. _Was_ his job, past tense, he supposes. Ron chose a different path, and that’s never been anything other than a low-level source of strain between them. One that Harry has no idea how to ease.

The others manage one or two useful spells between them. Draco is last. His face remains blank. He casts in a low, rapid tone, the individual words of the spells themselves inaudible. The door flies open every time.

He turns back to the group, all of whom are staring at him in surprise.

“Everyone needs to know more than one way out.”

His words are met with silence. Harry feels bile rise in his throat, and he swallows hard.

“Right,” Hermione soldiers on, clapping her hands together as if to dispel the awkwardness. “Ron, Hannah, Nev, and I will attempt to cast and hold the _Helico_ spell. Assuming it succeeds, Harry and Draco will concentrate on getting the oak doors at the top of the stairs open while Luna dashes up as quickly as she can.”

It doesn’t feel like much of a plan, but it’s what they have.

The water is as unsettling and dark as it was the day before, and the feeling of the Gillyweed just as awful. The wetsuits help, though, and as they paddle around each other to get into position, Harry feels the familiar surge of adrenaline he always got on an Auror raid: waiting in the dark, holding position, getting ready to move. That was always the part he liked best. Free to do what he was good at, without all the politics and the paperwork.

He and Malfoy float to opposing sides of the small space so that they can cast hard at the doors from different directions. Harry’s not convinced it’s possible to confuse the castle, exactly, but maybe it buys them a little time. 

On Hermione’s count, he holds his wand as high as he can above the water and concentrates everything he has at the door. The tiny space is suddenly alight with flying magic and an extraordinary amount of noise. He hears the stone groan and reform, but tries not to get distracted, throwing his magic at the old oak and feeling a sense of satisfaction as either his spell or Malfoy’s, or both, send the enormous wooden panels splintering back on their hinges. The steps are holding and Luna pulls herself from the water, dashing up them to the entryway and across the threshold. 

“It’s working!” she cries. “Come on!”

Still half-convinced the steps will disappear, Harry treads water slowly as the others cautiously pull themselves out of the slippery dark and dart up them one by one. Malfoy waits too, until the stairs are empty, and then pounces up like a cat, apparently as unconvinced they will stay solid as Harry is. 

“Move, Harry!” Hermione cries. “It might not last!”

The stone scrapes his knuckles as he heaves himself out of the water and takes the steps two at a time, reaching the top with a gasp. 

Nothing happens. The dark water laps slowly below them.

The silence feels thick. Harry has a ringing in his ears from all the spells ricocheting off the stone. The sound of his breathing is too loud inside his head. 

They’re in a passage at the dungeon level. Ahead, where wide stairs once lead generations of first years up to their inaugural banquet, there is nothing but a pile of rubble. Everything smells damp: a dank odor of disuse that smells almost organic. Like the greenhouses used to smell after they’d been shut up during a winter storm.

Luna strings her magical Christmas lights up around them. Hermione tries and fails to dry a patch of stone and so Neville unshrinks a large square of plastic tarpaulin. Harry sits gratefully, tugging off his wetsuit and drying himself with a towel from his pack. Warm clothes help a little, but still no one seems to know what to say. 

“We need to work out what’s happening with our magic,” Hermione concludes, wrapping her hair in a thin towel coiled tight on her head. “Some spells seem to work fine, and others either don’t work at all, or the castle responds.”

“What’s this going to mean for the ritual?” Ron asks. “Should we try those spells? No point in carrying on if they don’t work.”

“No,” Hermione shakes her head quickly. “I don’t want to run the risk that we … alert the castle in some way before we’re ready.”

“But maybe if it knows we’re here to help?” Luna asks. “It might be more inclined to let us through if it knows we aren’t here to hurt it.”

Behind them, Hannah lets out a sudden scream. She had stepped away from the group to get dressed, and as they run towards her, Harry realises she’s wrapped in Devil’s Snare. The plant is much larger and more aggressive than the one he remembers, long flailing vines lurching around a corner out of the dark. 

“You’ve got to relax!” Neville cries, clearly torn between rushing forward to help her and getting too close to the vines.

“I’m _trying_ ,” Hannah sobs.

Hermione is casting Bluebell Flames again, but with no luck.

“It’s heat,” Neville yells desperately, trying to sidestep another vine. “Sunlight. Fire. Anything you can think of in that vein. Cast _anything_.” 

Spurred out of shock into action, the group all draw their wands, but nothing will take in the damp air of the dungeon. A particularly swift vine shoots out and grabs Luna by the ankle, off-balancing her and tugging her in with a yelp. All of Hannah’s limbs are wrapped now and a thick vine is winding around her neck.

“ _I can’t_ —” she gasps, her face turning red.

To Harry’s left, there is suddenly a flash of white light and a roar of flame. The smell of sulphur floods Harry’s nostrils as Malfoy casts angrily at the plants. Harry can feel the heat of it on the side of his face and is transported immediately back to the Room of Hidden Things, the sweaty press of Malfoy behind him on a broom. Harry wants to open his mouth and scream, filled with terror and unable to believe Malfoy would do anything so _stupid_ , but there’s a vicious sizzling sound and an enormous cloud of steam fills the hallway, sending him into a coughing fit. 

“Hannah!” Neville cries, rushing forward. Harry’s about to grab for his arm to stop him but the air clears and he can see the piles of blackened vines. Luna rubs at her ankle, and Hannah bends at the waist, gasping for breath as Neville rubs anxiously at her back.

The Fiendfyre has disappeared.

Harry turns on Malfoy.

“What _was_ that?!” he hisses, fear turning his words furious. The rest of the group look more startled at Harry’s outburst than Malfoy, who meets Harry’s glare with a cool expression.

“A modified version of Fiendfyre. It burns as hot and as bright as the original spell, but flares out very quickly and can be controlled by the caster. I designed it myself.”

“Thank you, Draco,” Luna says sincerely, as Ron helps her to her feet.

“Yeah,” Neville says with genuine gratitude, clapping Malfoy on the arm. “Thank you.”

Harry just feels confused. The adrenaline has left him now, and he very much wants to be anywhere other than this damp, dark dungeon. He wants his magic to feel reliable. He absolutely does not want to have to rely on Draco sodding Malfoy.

“We should go back to camp,” Ron says, slicing the dead vines carefully away from Hannah’s legs. “I mean I want to swim through that lake again like a hole in the head, but we can’t stay here until we work out what’s up with our magic.”

“Would that that were possible,” Malfoy says with a sigh, pointing back the way they came. 

Hannah lets out an exhausted groan and Ron kicks a bit of broken masonry away in frustration. Sure enough, the splintered oak doors they’d destroyed to get in have fallen to the floor. But in the place of the open doorway is nothing but a smooth stone wall.

Hogwarts has sealed itself closed.

“We keep going,” Hermione says firmly. “Once the ritual takes place, the castle will open again.”

“We _think_ it will open again,” argues Neville. “And we don’t even know if we _can_ carry out the ritual if our magic doesn’t work.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Hermione responds, tugging a notebook from her pocket. Harry wants to yell at her. _When?! When we were prising our way into this godforsaken place? When we were just fighting to stop a plant from killing Hannah?_ But he knows her well enough to know this is how she copes. 

Harry drags over Neville’s tarp and drops heavily onto it, leaning his back against the wall. His limbs ache and his eyes feel scratchy. Even with Luna throwing up more Christmas lights, the place still feels too dark and the walls too close. He hates everything about this.

“It seems we can’t manage basic spells,” Hermione says. “ _Lumos_ and so on. But we _can_ do things that are more complex, things we’ve learned more recently. Harry’s Auror spells; Draco’s fire.”

“Let’s test it, then,” Ron suggests. “We could do the basic exam battery.” 

Any student at Hogwarts knows the set of basic warm-up spells that are tested at the start of any practical exam — a way of making sure a student is at the right level. They each try to cast them: _Accio, Lumos, Wingardium Leviosa_...  
_  
_ Absolutely nothing happens. It’s awful. It feels to Harry like he’s suddenly got one hand tied behind his back. 

Hermione, on the contrary, seems oddly satisfied. “I think my theory is right, then. Any spells we learned here at school won’t work. Anything we learned outside of school will.”

Harry has a horrible sinking sensation. “ _Expecto patronum,_ ” he casts loudly. 

Nothing. Not even the weak silvery wisps he’d managed when he first tried the spell. Ron stares at him in horror. They each try and fail, including Malfoy. Harry wonders absently who taught him the spell and when. Probably Malfoy’s happy memory involves something ridiculous, like unicorns attending his fifth birthday party. Harry can’t dwell on it though. Now they have a blocked exit and no communication with the outside world.

“Fuck,” Neville sighs, putting voice to Harry’s thoughts. “This is pretty dangerous, Hermione. We’re trapped in here; we can’t Apparate and we can’t call for help.”

“We don’t know that we’re trapped,” Hermione argues, rolling her eyes. “We’ve seen about six feet of corridor so far.”

“And it nearly killed us,” Ron mutters mutinously.

“And we _do_ have a way out if we need it.” She produces a teaspoon from her pocket. “This Portkey will take us straight to St Mungo’s if we need an evacuation. Hannah, are you injured?”

Hannah rubs at her arm, but shakes her head.

“Luna?”

“No,” Luna replies. “I’m a little sad that we had to kill the plant, though. If we’d had a little more time —”

Ron makes a slightly strangled noise. Harry sympathises. 

“Then, we don’t currently need help and the best way out is through,” concludes Hermione, pocketing the teaspoon again.

“Not without rest,” warns Hannah. “We can’t cast _Tempus_ and none of us are wearing watches, but we’ve been through two difficult ordeals in a row, and everyone needs a break. We need to find somewhere safe to set up, eat, and sleep.”

Harry certainly feels exhausted, even if Hannah is right that he has no idea what time of day it is. 

“The Slytherin dorms are around this corner.” Malfoy points into the gloomy passageway ahead. 

“We won’t know what the password is,” Ron grumbles, clearly unhappy with that idea.

Malfoy levels an even look at him. “Who would have changed it?”

It’s both a fair point and a terrible reminder that no one has been here since those final fateful days. Harry thinks about McGonagall ordering the Slytherins to the dungeons. How terrified some of the younger children must have been. He shakes his head and gets to his feet. It’s as good a plan as any. Not that he’s going to tell Malfoy that.

They gather up their packs and move tentatively forward, accompanied by the sickly glow of conjured Christmas lights, wands at the ready for any further plant attacks. Harry takes the lead, stopping in front of the blank stretch of wall and waiting for Malfoy to catch up. 

He glances at Harry in confusion. “How did you —”

“Your common room wasn’t that big of a secret, Malfoy,” he snaps. “Do you remember the last password or not?”

“ _Loyalty_ ,” Malfoy says crisply, and the door to the Slytherin common room is revealed.

Unlike the damp passage outside, this unlocked space feels dry and dusty. The huge windows Harry remembers looking out under the lake are just closed stretches of stone now, making the space seem smaller and somehow less intimidating. Malfoy uses his fire spell to light a set of torches in sconces along one wall. Ron flops onto an overstuffed green couch, succumbing to a coughing fit as a cloud of dust shoots up all around him.

“Do you think we can light a proper fire?” Luna asks, looking hopefully at the empty grate.

“I don’t think we have any way of knowing if the chimneys are opened or sealed.” Neville kneels and sticks his head in the fireplace, looking up. “Bloody dark. Impossible to tell.”

Hannah busies herself pulling out food pouches, while Hermione wipes off a nearby desk and spreads out her map, scratching notes to herself in the outline of the passageway and marking off the blocked exit and crumbled stairs. 

Sensing something amiss, Harry turns slowly to realise that Malfoy is no longer with them.

He’s about to ask the others where he’s gone when he hears a noise from the entrance to the dorms and goes to investigate.

The seventh year dorm must have once been striking. He can see the huge arches that would have surrounded the windows, now gone. The emerald green bed clothes and drapes are sagging and dull. The room looks like it was abandoned in a hurry, trunks open and clothing and books spilled across the floor. Harry realises he’s never given much thought to how things would have been left. Somehow, in his minds’ eye, Hogwarts has been sitting here pristine, like a museum. A mausoleum. It hadn’t occurred to him that there’d been no one left behind to clean up. That probably everywhere they go they’re going to encounter these fragments of lives lived and ended too soon.

He shudders a little.

Malfoy is sitting on a bed, stacking text books neatly into a pile. If he notices Harry, he doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Were they yours?” Harry asks, his voice coming out too loud in the thick silence of the small room.

Malfoy doesn’t look up. “No, this was Vincent’s bed.”

The name rings foreign in Harry’s ears and it takes him a minute. A rogue part of Harry’s brain will always think of Crabbe and Goyle as witless and cruel, mindlessly doing the bidding of the person now sitting in front of him. But all he can really think about is the heat and the smell of sulphur and that paralysing fear. 

“I’m sorry.”

Malfoy says nothing.

“For a second, back there with the plant, I thought you’d —”

Somehow Malfoy’s humorless, defeated-sounding snort is worse than any sharp retort Harry might have expected.

“It took me a long time,” Malfoy says quietly. “A Mind Healer recommended a Muggle technique called exposure therapy. You have to put yourself in the path of the thing you’re afraid of until you aren’t afraid anymore.”

Harry thinks that sounds like a bloody terrible idea, but says nothing. His brain has stalled out at the thought of Malfoy not only seeing a Mind Healer, but being willing to try a Muggle technique, however daft. Hermione gave up pleading with Harry to get help of his own years ago.

“I couldn’t exactly surround myself with Fiendfyre, and ordinary fire wasn’t what was keeping me awake for days on end. So I had to tinker with the spell until I had something that worked.”

“You...invented a spell to terrify yourself?”

Malfoy does look up at this. Harry’s struck again by the thought that he is too thin; the shadows under his eyes almost look like bruises.

“I’d do anything to get better, Potter. Wouldn’t you?”

Any number of snotty remarks form and die on Harry’s tongue. Malfoy stacks the last book onto Crabbe’s bedside table and gets up, dusting off his jeans and leaving the room.

The group shares a sombre meal on a floor rug that Neville took out into the corridor and gave a bit of a beating to. Hermione shows the path that she’s marked out for the following day, which will take them up past the kitchens and into the Great Hall.

“Have you noticed the portraits?” Hannah asks around a mouthful of spaghetti.

Harry looks up at an ornate landscape above the fireplace. Farmland rolls away into an oil-painted distance, green like almost everything else in the room. Beside the door, a gilt frame encloses a painting of a sitting room. In it, a worn leather couch is bathed in sun.

“Not very inspiring?”

“Empty,” Hannah corrects. “All of them. I’ve checked the girls’ dorms as well. No people, and no animals.”

Harry’s not sure he can blame them. What they’ve seen of the castle so far is so depressing, he can’t imagine any portrait with a choice would stick around. Still, _all_ of them is a little strange.  
By mutual agreement they decide it’s probably safer and easier to sleep here where they’ve cleared a space than to clean up a dorm room to use. Unspoken is the creepy sensation of seeing unmade beds and abandoned pyjamas. Ron and Luna drag a pile of bedding into the common room. 

It’s only as Hannah is dousing the torches that Harry realises Malfoy has slipped off again. Harry goes to check, finding him back in his old dorm.

Malfoy rolls his eyes at Harry, tugging another quilt over himself. “Where do you think I’m going to sneak off to Potter? This whole godforsaken place wants to kill us. I just want to sleep in my old bed. At least that feels like home.”

Harry scoffs. “Hardly the silk sheets you were accustomed to at _home_.”

Malfoy sighs, turning onto his back and looking up at the canopy overhead. “All the silk sheets in the world won’t make somewhere a home when you’re treated like a disappointment and a failure. Particularly once people are being tortured and killed under the same roof.”

Harry’s stomach turns. He thinks about what it might feel like when they reach the Gryffindor dormitory. Whether it will be comforting or terrible. He keeps thinking about Malfoy surrounding himself with the thing that scared him most until it didn’t have a hold over him any more.

“We’re not splitting up,” he says tersely. “If you want to sleep in here, I’m keeping an eye on you.”

He picks the bed with Nott’s name on the trunk. Serves the pasty bastard right for letting them down. He spells the sheets to an approximation of clean — he'd done his own laundry the Muggle way at the Dursleys, but was finally forced to learn some housekeeping spells after Kreacher retired — and slides in.

Malfoy’s mouth opens and closes, as if he’s about to say something cutting and then decides better of it. 

Harry’s asleep before he has a chance to think about how annoying that is.

~

“Harry! Draco!” 

Luna’s voice drags him from an uneven sleep.

“Come _quickly_!”

Harry kicks back the bedding and finds Malfoy already shoving his feet into his boots. He chases him out into the corridor to find Luna crouching beside the closed door to the common room.

“What’s going on?”

Luna looks more concerned than frightened, but her wand is out. 

“I slept in the girl’s dorm last night because I snore quite loudly. When I went to find everyone just now...something’s gone wrong.”

Panic starts to claw at Harry’s chest, and he tries to reach past her to open the door but she catches his arm.

“Careful, Harry, it smells off in there.”

Harry’s used to Luna pronouncing things _a bit wrong_ , or _uneven_ , or in one memorable case _too daffodil_ , but their friends are in there. He’s not going to wait.

He pushes open the door carefully and immediately discovers what Luna means. A sickly, cloying odor blankets the room. He tries to take in what is happening in the half-light. Hannah is sitting by herself, in the corner of the room facing the walls, and her shoulders are shaking as if she’s crying. Ron seems to have snapped the leg off an ornamental end table and is using it to whack repeatedly at a bare stretch of stone wall, yelling in a hoarse voice that it should _fuck off back where it came from_. Hermione is shouldering repeatedly at the closed door to the corridor, as if it should open out when Harry knows it opens in. He can’t see Neville at all.

He’s about to rush into the room when that scent hits him again, and he draws back, slamming the door closed and leaning over to take a deep breath.

“They’re hallucinating,” he gasps.

“I think so, yes.” Luna nods. “It smells like poppies and cravenleaf. And something else I can’t place.”

“The castle is trying to _poison_ us?” Malfoy sounds as appalled as Harry feels. 

“We need to clear out the air in that room.” Harry tries to think. “There aren’t many places for it to go.”

“I can make a fan,” Luna offers. “ _The Quibbler’s_ offices are very old and have terrible temperature control over the summer. I’ve gotten good at it.” She darts into the nearest bedroom and comes out with a slide rule, which she sets to spinning in the air with her wand. It starts up a firm, consistent breeze.

“We’ll need to open the far door to blow out the bad air,” Harry says, his hand tightening on the doorknob. 

“Wait,” Malfoy spins on his heel and returns with a Slytherin scarf. “At least wrap this around your nose and mouth in case you get caught in there longer than you want.”

Harry had been planning to just hold his breath, but he’s forced to admit this idea is more practical and ties the scarf around his face, hating the scratchy feel of the musty wool against his skin.

“ _Ready_?” he asks Luna, his voice muffled. She ties the Canonbury Academy scarf they’d found on the way in around her face and nods.

He throws the door open, dashing across the common room as quickly as he can. None of the others pay him any attention, lost in whatever nightmares they’re currently experiencing. He gets to the entrance, gently grabbing Hermione by the shoulders to move her aside. She screams at him, eyes wide and unseeing. He pushes her out of the way, as firmly as he can without hurting her, and opens the door to the corridor.

“ _Now, Luna_!” he yells, and he feels the breeze start up on the back of his neck. Hermione tries to make a break for it, so he catches her around the waist, holding her struggling form against his chest and hoping like hell this works.

Luna has obviously taught Malfoy the spell as they step into the room together, scarves around their own faces, and set several quills and other small objects to spinning. Harry feels like he shouldn’t take too deep a breath, but keeping Hermione restrained is harder than he anticipated, and his lungs are burning. He can feel the wind on his face, but in the darkened common room, it’s impossible to tell if it’s working.

Hermione wriggles again, slipping free of his grasp. He lets out a frustrated growl, lunging for her and missing as she crumples abruptly to the floor.

“Hermione!” He crouches beside her, pushing her hair back from her neck and checking her pulse. Her breathing is ragged and uneven, but as her eyes blink open, she seems able to focus.

“Harry?” 

She sounds tired and confused. Behind him, he can hear Ron’s steady pounding of the wall cease.

“It’s working!” Luna calls, her voice still thick behind her scarf.

“Harry, what’s going on?” Hermione struggles to sit up, and he helps her lean back against the wall.

“Something went wrong with the air in here.” He pushes the scarf down so that it hangs around his neck. “You were all seeing things, I think.”

There’s a thud to their left, and he looks over to see Neville sliding out from under a sofa, looking exhausted, a haunted expression on his face and a bruise blooming high on his forehead.

Luna sets up more of their little fans around the room while Malfoy lights the torches.

“It was awful,” Hannah says with a shudder, pulling a blanket around her shoulders as the group gathers back on the rug. 

“I don’t want to talk about it. I _knew_ sleeping in here was a bloody terrible idea.” Ron digs around in his pack for food and starts to spread bread and cheese and cold cuts in front of them, his face flushed, whether from embarrassment or anger.

“I’m going to look around,” Harry decides, pulling his scarf up over his nose. “We need to work out where that came from.”

Malfoy is crouching in the corner where Hannah had been. He gets to his feet quickly and strides toward the door. “I have an idea about that.” 

He’s past Harry and out into the corridor before Harry can protest, forced to jog after him, trying to take shallow breaths. Malfoy rounds two corners and Harry realises where they are: the Potions classroom. Malfoy pauses a few feet from the door.

Harry waits for a second, impatient. When Malfoy doesn’t make a move, he pushes past him, reaching for the door. Malfoy grabs him by the arm with surprising force, spinning him off balance and shoving him roughly against the stone wall of the corridor. For someone so thin, he’s strong, holding Harry in place with his forearm.

“What the fuck, Malfoy.” The scarf muffles the venom in his tone.

“Look with your eyes instead of your whole stupid body,” Malfoy seethes, pointing back at the door. He takes an abrupt step backwards, releasing Harry, who very much wants to rub at the tender spot on his breastbone, but doesn’t. 

He scowls at Malfoy and looks where he’s indicating. Underneath the closed door of the Potions classroom, a slick, shiny-looking substance has started to leak out, barely making its way into the corridor. The surface of it bubbles slightly.

“What is it?” 

“Merlin only knows.” Malfoy waves his wand and the liquid retracts back under the door like a startled animal. He starts to cast again, sealing the edges of the door to the floor and the surrounding walls with a thick, rubbery strip.

“What are you doing? How do you know a spell like that?”

Malfoy finishes his work and gives Harry a withering look as he stalks off back to the common room, forcing Harry to trot behind him again in his wake. Harry’s torn between being absolutely furious and confused about everything.

When they get back, the little fans are still running and the air smells clear, but Malfoy immediately moves around the room casting his sealing spells at the heating vents.

“Mind clueing the rest of us in, Malfoy?” Harry snaps, annoyed. He tugs the scratchy scarf off his face and tosses it onto an armchair.

Hermione, though, has already caught on. “This room would share ventilation with … Potions, oh _Merlin_.” 

Malfoy gives a curt nod.

“An explanation for the rest of us?” Ron asks, chewing on a cold sausage and eyeing Harry and Malfoy with suspicion. 

“Some potions ingredients can be stored indefinitely,” Hermione says, distracted as she pulls out her notebook and immediately begins to write. “Dried plants and so on. But some are very unstable. They have to be used within a certain period of time, or they have to be maintained under charms that are regularly refreshed. Otherwise, they can break down, change composition, and become extremely dangerous.”

“And we decided to sleep next to a room full of potions ingredients that haven’t been maintained in a decade,” Hannah concludes, looking even more pale.

“You didn’t go in, did you?” Hermione asks abruptly, and Harry feels his face heat. He hears Robards’ voice ringing in his ears, shouting about Harry being _rash_ and _overconfident_. He waits for Malfoy’s inevitably snide remark taking credit for saving him from himself.

“No, of course not,” Malfoy replies, without looking at him. “I sealed it up. I don’t know if it will hold, though. Things could have combined in there in any number of ways that might eventually destroy that seal.”

“How do you even know a sealing spell?” Harry asks, irritated with himself and taking it out on what seems like an easy target. “We know nothing about you and what you’ve been doing for the last decade.”

Malfoy fixes Harry with a blank, even stare.

“I helped a winemaker in the south of France who was having trouble with some leaking barrels. And I’ll happily tell you every sordid detail of my post-War life if you’re so interested, Potter. I’m sure you’ll enjoy hearing just how far the mighty have fallen. But we have more important things to do right now. We’ll save it for a bedtime story.”

Harry bristles and starts to respond, but Hermione catches his arm and nods at Malfoy. “Luna said she could detect the smell of poppies and cravenleaf, which gives us something to work with. But the hallucinogen might have lasting or recurring effects. It’s hard to know how much we inhaled.”

Neville is holding a charmed icepack to his forehead. “Catildeweed would work for that,” he muses. “It’s a sort of universal anti-psychotic. But I didn’t pack any.”

Hermione frowns, turning the page and making more notes. 

Neville snaps his fingers, dropping the icepack in his lap. “There will be dried catildeweed in the kitchens, though! The house-elves used it for making that weird jam McGonagall always liked. I used to help Sprout pick it for them.” 

Ron finishes his sausage, smacking his lips noisily. “Righto, then. Let’s get to the kitchens and make sure we don’t have any more of those fucked-up dreams. Once was enough, I swear.”

He gives Malfoy a sideways glare as he gathers up his things. Malfoy ignores him.

Harry leans against the cold stone wall, frowning. He supposes it’s in Malfoy’s interests that they don’t all die in the dungeon. There’ll be no redemption for him if that happens. But still — saving Harry from doing something fatally stupid and then refraining from gloating about it? Nothing about _that_ makes sense. 

The sooner they get through this and he can find out what the hell Malfoy’s been up to, the better.

~

Malfoy shows them a staircase on the map that the Slytherins used as a shortcut to the Great Hall. “It lets out here, by the Hufflepuff common room,” he points. 

“Let’s hope the tapestry still works.” 

“And that it doesn’t hate us the way everything else seems to,” Ron mutters.

Thankfully, the tickled pear responds normally, revealing the door to the kitchens. Neville is about to push it open when Hermione catches his sleeve. “Wait.”

They pause, listening. There’s noise coming from inside. Rhythmic thudding. An occasional splash.

“Merlin, are there still _elves_ trapped in here?” Ron’s expression is horrified.

“Definitely not!” Hermione hisses. “The Hogwarts staff joined the Union of Free Elves in 1998. Your mother hires them to help out at Christmas!”

Harry thinks about Dobby. He thinks about Kreacher and his own dusty house, and what it will be like to go home to when his friends aren’t coming over every evening to plan an adventure. The idea of hiring an elf to just have someone to talk to seems a bit desperate. And he’s never found them to be conversationalists.

“Let’s just go carefully. We’ve got no idea what’s in there.”

Harry puts up a standard Auror shield in front of them as Neville gently pulls open the door. The noise is suddenly much louder and more discordant. The huge copper cauldrons hanging over the long-dead fires ring with the sound of giant stirring rods banging against their edges. Two giant sinks appear to be flinging dishes from one to the other, splashing scummy grey water over the edges and onto the floor. But the truly terrifying part — the part that has Harry double the strength behind his shield charms — is the wide central bench where over a hundred knives rhythmically chop at nothing.

“Well, that’s pretty creepy,” Ron whispers.

“Kitchen magic,” Hannah whispers back. “It’s got a whole life of its own. You should see the deep fryer at the Leaky if I don’t feed it potatoes regularly enough.” Hannah works summers at the pub to pay for her Healer training. She’s always slipping them extra chips. Harry’s never given much thought to where they come from.

“The catildeweed will be in the herb pantry.” Neville points to a door inconveniently located at the other end of the bench of knives.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Luna announces, straightening up from her crouch and moving to the front of the group. “The cutlery all seems very busy. It probably won’t even notice us.”

She steps daintily forward, and before any of them can even yell their objections, half a dozen knives have flung themselves directly at her. Neville yanks Luna to the ground, as at least two of the blades slide discouragingly through Harry’s shield and embed themselves shudderingly in the door frame above them.

“Still quite sharp, then. Those Auror spells aren’t up to much,” Ron bites out, his voice quavering.

“Maybe we don’t actually _need_ the catildeweed,” Harry suggests. This seems like a totally unnecessary risk to take, even to him.

“We definitely do,” Neville insists.

“But —”

“Sorry, Harry, but I’m 95 percent sure your pack isn’t covered in spiders, and I’d really like it if I could make that a hundred by having them disappear altogether.”

Ron spins around to glare at Harry’s pack, but as far as Harry can tell it’s just plain green canvas, no arachnids in sight. 

“Okay, let’s brainstorm,” Hermione says, looking around the kitchen. “There are no bad ideas.”

Harry looks at a particularly vicious little paring knife repeatedly embedding itself in a chopping board and thinks that there are _definitely_ bad ideas, and that coming here certainly ranks among them.

“We could get a suit of armour from a corridor somewhere?” 

“I think we just need a distraction,” Hannah says, rummaging around in her pack. 

“Bags-not being that,” Ron snorts, as a long-empty kettle whistles unhappily on a hob.

“Not one of _us_ ,” Hannah explains, pulling out a sack of shrunken fruit and returning it to full size. “The kitchen needs something to do.” She hands out the apples and oranges. “On the count of three, throw them onto the bench.”

Harry takes a couple of red apples and gets ready.

Hannah counts, “Three, two...” and then casts to knock a large bag of flour off a shelf into a bowl below. “One!”

Harry and the others lob the fruit into the centre of the room. One of Luna’s throws goes wild, but the rest hit the bench, and before they can even roll, the knives rearrange themselves in a tornado of activity, peeling and slicing. The flour pours out of the bag, and a bottle of oil uncaps by itself, and suddenly the whole air in the kitchen changes.

“Quick,” whispers Hannah. “It’s not going to last long with no elves and no fires. Let’s go.”

She and Neville crouch low and run across the kitchen toward the pantry, the others holding fruit at the ready in case a knife looks like it doesn’t have enough to do.

They’re back quickly, Neville clutching a cloth bag in his hand, and the group withdraws into the corridor, pushing the heavy door closed against the sound of a particularly dissonant clanging.

Harry lets his shields drop and sinks to the floor with a groan. Malfoy, opposite, tosses his apple up and catches it, studying it before taking a bite. “Not quite what I imagined when you extended the invitation, Granger,” he muses after a minute. “Fighting a kitchen armed with fruit.”

It’s very hard to tell if he’s joking, but it makes Harry want to lob an orange at his stupid head anyway.

Neville mixes the dried catildeweed with some water into a sour smelling paste, and gives each of them a spoonful. 

“Do we need it?” Harry asks, waving a hand over his shoulder to indicate Malfoy and wrinkling his nose at the smell.

“No harm in taking it,” Neville argues, “and we don’t really know how much you breathed in.”

“Or what’s coming next,” adds Malfoy, reaching past him and taking the spoon.

The idea of not being able to trust what he sees is pretty horrifying, Harry concludes, swallowing his own foul-tasting dose, even if it means he has to do what Malfoy thinks is best.

“Right, onwards and upwards.” Harry thinks Hermione sounds far too chipper for someone who recently had knives flying at her head, but it’s hard to argue with the idea of getting above ground, and so the group picks their way up the rubble-strewn stairs to the Great Hall.

~

Even as awful as the situation in the lower floors had been, being here is so much worse. Harry’s suddenly very glad he swallowed Neville’s paste, because the idea of his brain bringing back all of the terrifying events of that day in vivid detail is more than he can bear.

The doors to the Great Hall are standing open, one listing slightly on a damaged hinge. Harry doesn’t want to go in, because all he can think is that the dead will still be there, lying on the benches, even as he knows they’re long buried.

No one says anything. 

Hermione walks toward the doors.

The others are drawn after her, except for Malfoy, who seems as rooted to the floor as Harry.

“I don’t think I can...” Malfoy says quietly. 

_Of course you can’t_ , Harry thinks, _because you’re still a coward_. Somehow, that’s enough to propel Harry back into motion, striding after the others and leaving Malfoy where he stands.

For a second, Harry’s misled into thinking that the roof above him has entirely collapsed, which doesn’t make any sense because he remembers the Hall after the battle. He remembers it full of people. He doesn’t remember it like this.

But then as his eyes adjust, he realises the ceiling overhead is only magically depicting a stormy sky, and the terrible destruction all around them is the windows. The beautiful stained glass that had once soared up the walls has all fallen inwards — the spaces themselves vanished with nothing but stone in their wake — and around them is a catastrophic forest of broken shards, piled high over the floors and tables and benches.

Luna lets out a little sob.

“We’ll fix it,” Hermione insists. “That’s why we’re here.”

She waves her wand over the end of the Gryffindor table, gets frustrated when nothing happens, and pushes some of the glass back with her sleeve to create space for her map. She and Neville and Hannah put their heads together, tracing lines where the moving staircases should or could be.

Harry toes at a nearby pile of glass with his boot, listening to the musical tinkle as little broken pieces cascade down to the floor. So much destruction. 

To his left, there’s a sudden slide of glass.

“What are you doing?” he calls to Ron, who has inexplicably jumped up onto the Hufflepuff table, kicking some glass out of the way.

Ron laughs and points up at the High Table. “Thought I’d go sit in Dumbledore’s chair. Not like I’ll get the chance again.” He does a silly sort of jig, causing more glass to slide off the table, and starts to pick his way towards the front of the Hall.

“That seems a bit daft, mate,” Harry calls. “Get down.”

“Just a bit of fun,” Ron calls over his shoulder. “Not much else is fun around here, you have to admit.” Ron’s been annoyed since Malfoy turned up, and whatever he saw in his dreams seems to have left him even more out of sorts. Harry’s used to him getting a bit obstinate when he’s tired or irritable, but it’s still frustrating.

“Come on, get down.” 

The storm clouds overhead feel thick and ominous, and Harry suddenly feels deeply uneasy.

“What, is Mr. Auror ordering me around now?” Ron laughs, though the mocking tone has an edge to it, the way it always does when he jokes about their respective careers. Ron chose to partner with George and step into Fred’s shoes rather than join Harry at the DMLE, and it’s a decision that’s never rested easily on his shoulders. He kicks another pile of broken glass that cascades to the floor. “Going to arrest me for vandalism?”

In all the years Harry sat under it for meals, exams, and assemblies, the enchanted ceiling has never made a noise, and yet Harry swears he now hears a roll of thunder. He figures it must be coming from outside. The air feels ionised, like the conjured weather above them might actually be real. Like rain could strike his face at any moment.

Ron’s a good ten feet down the table now, walking backwards and waving at Harry like a truculent child.

It happens in slow motion.

The lightning arcs across the sky above them, flashing bright across the Hall and bouncing off the millions of shards of glass. A horrible cracking sound snaps through the silence and Harry hears a scream behind him. He can’t look though, starting to rush toward Ron as he sees the shattered wood of the poles that carry the house banners break off and start to fall. His momentum is abruptly stalled as someone grabs him from behind, yanking him bodily backwards and out of the way of a giant chunk of falling masonry. The stone disintegrates at his feet and Harry gasps, realising that somehow Malfoy has just appeared out of nowhere and saved his life. But he doesn’t get more than a split-second to think about it as he’s forced to watch the broken pole knock Ron from the table and into the mounds of glass.

Suddenly, Harry’s sixteen all over again watching blood bloom across Malfoy’s white shirt. There’s an impossible, _horrible_ amount of blood spreading across Ron’s chest. It’s _wrong_. Harry violently tugs himself free of Malfoy’s shaking grip and picks his way forward as fast as he dares, wand already out, casting the triage spells every Field Auror knows by heart at the top of his lungs. 

Ron doesn’t move.

He feels Hannah pull gently at his arm, shifting him out of her way. “Let me, Harry.” 

He stumbles back a step, colliding with a sobbing Hermione. He tugs her into his chest, wrapping her up in a hug, his hand on the back of her head.

Hannah’s working quickly and already has Ron encased in a full-body stasis charm, his skin an eerie green as a result. 

“Nev, help me here,” she asks. “I’m going to lift him; I need you to sweep all the glass out from underneath.”

Her levitation charm is a medical one, nothing as clumsy as the ones they learned at school, and Ron’s prone form floats gently into the air. Neville immediately casts a sweeping spell that shifts the broken glass back to the wall like a crashing wave. It’s only as Hannah delicately lowers Ron back to the ground that Harry realises to his horror that there are several shards of glass protruding from him. He feels sick, and he pulls Hermione closer.

“What can we do?” Luna asks weakly, and Harry realises she’s standing next to him now, clutching at Malfoy’s arm. Harry finds he can’t catch his breath properly. He wants to thank Malfoy for saving him, but he also wants to scream that he stopped him from getting to Ron in time. He wants none of this to have happened at all.

Hannah says nothing as she concentrates on her spells for another few long minutes before she rocks back on her heels and exhales heavily.

“Okay, I’ve stemmed the bleeding and stabilised him, but we need to get him up to the hospital wing.”

Hermione’s sobs have slowed and she pulls out of Harry’s arms, looking helplessly down at Ron’s glowing body.

“My first aid kit is good, Hermione,” Hannah says, taking her hand and squeezing it. “But I didn’t prepare for this. I need to take the glass out, and there’s going to be internal damage I need to repair.” 

“Is it safe to move him?”

“While he’s in this charm, yes. I can hold it for a half hour or so, which should give us plenty of time, assuming nothing else happens.”

Everyone falls silent at that. Given their experience so far, the likelihood of safe passage seems pretty low. Still, it seems to spur Hermione into action. “Alright. Hannah, teach Luna and Neville the levitation spell, so you can concentrate on holding the stasis. Harry, Draco, and I will go in front and clear the way as best we can.”

 _It’s all wrong_ , Harry thinks. Ron lying there unconscious. The very idea of him and Hermione and _Draco Malfoy_ doing _anything_ together. If only he’d moved faster. If only Ron had listened when he —

“Are you okay, Harry?” Luna asks.

Harry kicks a piece of fist-sized stone on the ground where it broke off the block that missed him by an inch. He glances up to find Malfoy staring at him, a small frown on his face. _Probably regretting saving me_ , Harry thinks, scowling at him and turning on his heel to leave the Hall.

“I’m fine, Luna. Let’s get on with it.”

The moving staircases are frozen still, unhelpfully pointing in all directions, but for the first time since they arrived they encounter a small piece of luck. One of them is stuck heading straight to the second floor. 

“What if it moves when we get on it?” Hannah asks cautiously as they gather at the foot of the stairs, Ron hovering gently behind them. Malfoy sighs and immediately darts up the first four steps and stands there looking around at the empty portraits as if daring someone — or something — to strike him down. Harry’s breath hitches in his chest and he wants to grab at Malfoy and yank him back.

Nothing moves. 

“While we all appreciate your daring, Malfoy, after what just happened I think we should do a little less charging in,” Neville says, lifting his wand to carefully move Ron onto the stairs with him.

“I’ll throw an apple next time,” Malfoy sneers, taking the remaining steps two at a time without looking back.

Harry’s chest feels tight. Only a few hours ago he’d have been pretty happy if the stairs had tossed Malfoy clean back to the dungeons, but he feels a lot more confused about things now that Malfoy’s saved his life.

They reach the hospital wing without incident and immediately wish they hadn’t.

If there’s anywhere no one wants to see ten years after the scene of a battle, it’s the place where the wounded and dying were brought. Neville takes charge, using an industrial strength banishing spell he learned at the apothecary to vanish bed linen, bandages, and stains. Harry finds a broom in a closet and sweeps the dust by hand, more for something to do than anything else. Luna comes back from Pomfrey’s rooms with a pile of clean sheets and makes up a bed, before Neville carefully lowers Ron onto it.

He looks sickly in the green glow of the charm, and the amount of blood on his clothes is horrifying. Hermione draws up a chair beside the head of his bed, her expression agonised. Hannah gathers the potions and equipment she needs and gets to work.

It takes a long time. Painstaking, intricate spellwork draws the long, ugly shards of glass from Ron’s torso, and each time one comes out Hannah has to immediately start casting again to repair the damage to nerves, stem the bleeding, and knit closed the wounds. 

Harry feels helpless.

Neville tugs him away. “C’mon mate, don’t watch. Hannah knows what she’s doing.”

He turns to find Luna and Malfoy cleaning and remaking the other beds. “We might as well stay here,” Luna explains, passing a pile of pillowcases to him. “Ron’s not going to be up to moving.”

“But our previous home was so inviting,” Harry replies drily. “It had Slytherin bedding _and_ noxious gas.”

Malfoy scowls at him. That, at least, is familiar. Harry finds himself almost grateful for it. They clean the room, light the torches in the sconces, and drag in comfier chairs from Pomfrey’s quarters. Neville is just in the process of sorting out food for them all when Hannah announces that she’s finished.

They gather around Ron’s bed as she lifts the stasis, the green field dissipating. Ron blinks and lets out a weak groan.

“You’re okay,” Hermione assures him, clutching at his hand. Harry can only think about Ron lying in this very bed after he was poisoned all those years ago. It makes his blood hot, and he very much wants to take it out on Malfoy, who is thankfully out of arm’s reach. 

Ron opens his eyes. Hermione helps him put another pillow behind his head. 

“Guess you were right, mate,” Ron says weakly, looking at Harry, who lets out a startled laugh.

“You scared us there. Thank Merlin for Hannah.”

Ron smiles at her. “Reckon you’ll pass your exams with flying colours if you managed to stop me looking like a cheese grater.”

She gives him more potions to swallow, and the colour starts to come back to his face.

“How do you feel?”

“Weak,” Ron admits. “Like my insides have been a bit scrambled.”

“Well, you’ll sleep better in your own bed.” Neville sounds reassuring, although Harry thinks he might be overselling the comforts of the hospital wing.

“What do you mean?” Luna asks.

“I mean, this is the end, right?” Neville asks, looking at the rest of them with a confused expression. “Ron’s terribly injured. It’s time to use the Portkey.”

 _The teaspoon_. Harry had forgotten it was an option, acting on auto-pilot as he’d made beds and swept the floor. 

“Right. Of course. Now that Ron’s okay, we need to get out of here. Nev’s right.”

He looks back at Ron, who is staring at Hermione, an unspoken conversation going on between them. 

“You’re fine now, aren’t you?” Hermione asks him quietly, and Harry bites his lip so hard it hurts.

“He’s not _fine_ , Hermione. He was sliced to ribbons. We need to go.”

Hermione doesn’t even look around.

“You can rest here as long as you need to,” she says, her tone almost pleading, squeezing Ron’s hand. 

“Come on, Hermione,” Neville intercedes, his voice sounding as incredulous as Harry feels. “At the very least Ron needs to use the Portkey. He should be in St Mungo’s, even if we decide to carry on.”

 _Which is a pretty big ‘if’_ , Harry thinks. He can’t understand why Hermione is being stubborn, particularly in the wake of very nearly losing Ron.

Ron ignores them all, never breaking eye contact with Hermione. “I’m not leaving.”

Hannah makes a disapproving noise but says nothing.

“Ron, mate,” Harry tries again, “you’ve got to. Nothing is more important than you recovering properly.”

Ron looks at him this time, but his expression is cold. Any of his humour on waking has evaporated. “I said, I’m not leaving. I left you once before, and look where it got us.”

Harry swallows hard around a lump in his throat. “That was ten years ago. And I’d say it turned out okay in the end.” He means it. But he also knows there are ways in which Ron’s never really overcome what happened in the Forest of Dean.

Ron just shakes his head and sinks back against the pillows.

Hermione, seemingly vindicated, is all business now, patting his hand and drawing up his blankets. 

“Ron can rest here tomorrow while we make sure the path through the third floor is clear. We might as well make this our base of operations. It seems as safe as anywhere.”

Harry glances around at the others for support. Luna just looks sad.

“I think we should discuss this, Hermione,” Neville argues. “This whole trip has turned out to be bloody dangerous, and now Ron’s been badly injured. I wanted this to succeed as much as any of us, but we need to be realistic about this.”

Malfoy asks Hannah, “Is there anything they would do at St Mungo’s to make him more comfortable that you’re not able to do here?”

Harry tries to work out if he’s asking because he wants Ron to leave or to stay, but Malfoy’s motives — as ever — remain opaque.

“Well, no...but —”

“So nothing is to be gained,” Hermione leaps in, deciding she’s found an ally in Malfoy. “Ron wants to stay. There’s no reason to overrule him on that. And no reason not to carry on. We were fine getting him up here to the hospital wing, weren’t we?”

Harry thinks about the empty portraits, the awful rigidity of the frozen stairs. He glares at Malfoy as if this is somehow his fault. Some part of it must be, surely. Malfoy just arches one pale eyebrow back at him like an unspoken question. Harry feels his face get hot.

“So there’s no need to change plans.” Hermione says it with an overemphasised finality, as if she’s not interested in arguing about the topic any further. “Let’s have something to eat.”

Hannah gives Ron a potion to help him sleep and the others gather in the chairs to have reheated stew and chewy bread rolls. An awkward silence descends that no one seems inclined to break. Harry realises once again he has no idea how much time has passed or what meal this is even supposed to be, but he feels shattered.

“I’m going to sleep,” he says finally, getting up to rinse his bowl in Pomfrey’s sink. No one suggests it’s a bad idea. There’s certainly no one willing to suggest that they press on immediately. He picks the bed furthest from Ron’s to get into, pulling a pillow over his head and closing his eyes.

He keeps thinking about Malfoy: too scared at first to even go into the Great Hall, still fast enough on his feet to keep Harry out of danger. 

It takes him far too long to drift off.


	4. Three

When Harry blinks his eyes open the next morning, the all-too-familiar surrounds of the Hogwarts hospital wing leave him confused for a second. His brain races to catalogue his limbs as if he might be injured in some way. It takes him a minute to realise that Malfoy is lying in the bed beside his, watching him.

There’s a part of Harry that wants to snap at him to fuck off, but there’s also a twinge in his bicep where Malfoy hauled him out of the path of falling stone and certain death. 

“Thank you,” he says instead, voice rough with sleep. “For yesterday. Or earlier. Whenever the fuck it was.”

Malfoy says nothing, but a faint flush rises on his pale cheeks. 

Harry feels awkward and rolls to the other side of his narrow bed to get up.

He finds Ron awake and chatting with Hannah.

“How are you feeling?”

“Good, considering,” Ron nods, as Hannah hands him another potion to swallow. “Have to replenish quite a lot more blood before I’ll be up to dancing on tables again, but.”

Harry takes the joke for the olive branch that it is and smiles at him. “More sausages for the rest of us.”

Once everyone is awake, they sit together around Ron’s bed, Hermione’s map spread out on his blankets, to make a plan.

“We need to find a way through the third floor classrooms so we can get up to the library,” Hermione points.

“Maybe they’ll just be empty, like the staircases,” Luna suggests hopefully. No one else seems to share her optimism.

“The staircases are our first hurdle. We were lucky getting up here, but none of the others were pointing where we need them to be.”

“What about Hannah’s levitation spell?” Neville asks. “We know it works. It’s relatively simple to hold, although it’s very slow.”

Hermione nods. “It leaves us a little exposed but we’ll all be together.”

“Not all of us,” Ron groans, shifting slightly and causing the map to rumple.

“In spirit,” she says to appease him, patting at his arm distractedly while she straightens the map. Harry catches a slightly wounded expression flit across Ron’s features, but it’s gone before he can focus on it clearly.

Hannah lines up little bottles of potions on Ron’s bedside table with notes about which ones to take. Luna finds a battered old alarm clock in Pomfrey’s rooms that still seems to be ticking. They have no way of knowing if it’s telling the right time, but it will give Ron a way to pace his doses.

“Maybe I should stay,” Hannah says uncertainly, looking at Ron’s pale, tired expression.

“No,” Ron shakes his head weakly. “I just have to lie here. Merlin knows what you lot are going to face up there.”

It’s an ugly thought — prioritising where their Healer should be. Harry thinks again about the teaspoon in Hermione’s pocket and feels a fresh wave of irritation. He shoves his chair back with a scrape and goes to recheck his pack.

“Your temper isn’t helping anything.” Malfoy’s tone is icy. Harry looks up to see him sinking to sit on the bed beside him. 

“If you’d kept your mouth shut, Ron would be in a real hospital by now.”

Malfoy doesn’t take the bait. He just stares at Harry as if he’s trying to solve a particularly complicated arithmancy problem.

“Weasley just needs to sleep and take potions. He doesn’t need Hannah. We might.”

“Those aren’t trade-offs we should be making,” Harry snaps, yanking too hard on a canvas strap so that it cuts uncomfortably into his hand. “We should use the Portkey. I thought you of all people would be delighted to get out of here.”

Malfoy laughs — an empty humourless sound. “If you want to call me a coward, Potter, just say it to my face.”

 _Of course you’re a fucking coward_ , Harry wants scream. _Everything you’ve ever done has been out of self-interest, including fleeing and refusing to face up to your past_.

“Tugging me out of harm’s way once doesn’t exactly prove otherwise,” he scoffs instead. 

Malfoy just shrugs. “This is bigger than all of us. Bigger than petty schoolboy rivalries. Too important to jeopardise when all Weasley needs is a nap.”

Harry’s mouth falls open in disbelief. “You’re going to lecture _me_ about duty and sacrifice?!”

Malfoy’s shoulders slump. “No,” he says with a defeated sigh, running a hand through his hair. “No.”

“What are you even doing here, Malfoy?” Harry asks, mostly to stop himself from staring at the blond strands falling back into place.

“My part.” Malfoy gets up and walks over to his own bed, his back to Harry, and doesn’t offer any further explanation. 

There’s something in Harry that wants to yank him back, shove him into a wall even. Demand answers about where he’s been and what he’s been doing and why he thinks he has any _part_ to play here at all. There’s a strand of something dark and ugly inside Harry that can’t believe all of his time at Hogwarts — even now, even this awful dystopian version — is bound up with Malfoy. He can’t escape him, like they’re two sides of a Galleon. Malfoy — who saved his life in the Manor even though Harry had once nearly taken his. Who has always seen a side of Harry he’s not sure anyone else has. A side Harry’s not even sure he likes.

He swings his pack on to his shoulders. There isn’t time for this. Ron’s lying in a bed wounded; the very walls around them pose a threat. Draco Malfoy needs to be the least of his worries.

“Let’s go,” he announces, to the room at large, his boots ringing on the stone floor as he strides toward the doors.

Being levitated to the third floor is an uncomfortable feeling. Neville was right, the spell is really slow, and it leaves Harry wishing he’d insisted they climb using ropes and without magic, so that he could keep up his momentum. He spends the long, powerless minutes studying the empty portrait frames. He wonders where the Fat Lady and Sir Cadogan and the others have gone. He hopes they’re enjoying their retirement in overwrought gilt frames somewhere cosy. A library in Oxford perhaps. Or a stately home. 

Harry’s the last to be lifted, and when he steps onto solid stone again he finds the others looking up at the higher floors. It doesn’t matter where the moving staircases point from now on, he realises, stomach sinking. The entrances to the upper corridors are sealed closed.

“So we use the spiral staircases,” Hermione declares. “At the ends of the floors. It will be fine.” No one else says anything.

The third floor is just as dark and desolate as everywhere else they’ve been. 

They agreed with Ron that they would secure a path to the fourth floor and the library before going back, and it seems like that will be pretty straightforward. The corridors are scattered with rubble, but otherwise deserted. The doors to the classrooms hang open and, inside, the evidence of the battle is everywhere. Broken furniture, shattered glass. Tattered textbooks in piles. Several benches are stacked high where someone must have once tried to barricade an archway.

It’s hard for Harry to see the evidence of just how wide-reaching the fighting had been. He’d been so focussed on getting to the Horcrux that day that everything else had been sidelined in his mind. The devastation is awful. He pauses, making a show of re-lacing his boot, but mostly just to take a moment. As he stands he catches sight of Malfoy, whose face looks grey and queasy even in the dim flickering light of their torches. 

Harry finds his instinctive response to say something cutting about this all being his fault has all but disappeared. Malfoy’s not to blame for evil on this scale. He’s as much a victim of this as any of them.

Suddenly, the temperature plummets. The group stutters to a halt as everyone notices, forming instinctively into a tight little half-circle against a wall to check their surroundings. 

“What is it?” Luna asks.

“I’m not sure,” Hermione says, waving her torch back and forth in an arc. Standing close like this, they are casting far less light around them and it’s harder to see. “Harry, do you remember the Death Day celebration? It feels like —”

“ _Ghosts!_ ” Harry hisses, spinning to his left as over a dozen spectral figures come racing around a corner towards them, screaming awful guttural noises from their shadowy mouths. These are nothing like the benevolent house ghosts of their childhood, Harry realises to his horror. These are the victims of battle and they’re on the attack.

“Stand your ground,” cries Hermione. “They can’t do anything other than make noise and —”

There’s a horrible violent shuddering around them. Bits of rubble and paper, book bindings, and splintered wood all lift off the floor and are swept up into the ghosts’ wake like a gathering tornado.

“You were saying?!” screams Harry over the noise, casting the strongest shield he can think of as the group huddles together crouching. The ghosts charge through them, and Harry closes his eyes, shuddering at the ice-cold feeling as they pass. Like being plunged back into the lake. He focuses on holding the shield, feeling the projectiles strike at him from all directions.

The ghosts are gone as quickly as they arrived, and Harry takes a deep breath before releasing his spell. 

“I didn’t think ghosts could do that,” Neville gasps, kicking away the bits of stone that surround them where they dropped. “Poltergeists, sure, but not ghosts.”

“They can’t,” insists Hermione, digging around for her notebook. “At most, they can create a disturbance in the air.”

“Well, that was certainly a disturbance,” Malfoy mutters, toeing at a dangerously sharp bit of metal that looks like it had once been the leg of a chair.

Harry realises Luna is still crouching beside him and places a hand on her shoulder. She looks up at him with wide, damp eyes. 

“Are you okay?”

“Didn’t you see, Harry? One of those ghosts was Colin.”

Harry stomach turns. He’d been so focussed on his defensive magic that it hadn’t occurred to him to actually _look_ at the ghosts or consider who they might have been. From the shocked expressions on the others’ faces, he obviously wasn’t alone.

Hannah helps Luna to her feet and gives her a tight hug. It’s a horrible thought, that there are victims here who’ve never found peace. It only increases Harry’s sense of urgency. They should have been here sooner. 

Hermione looks stricken. “What if...” she trails off. Harry doesn’t need her to finish that sentence. The idea that any of their loved ones are here — Fred, Remus, Tonks — is too horrible to contemplate. Worse, the thought of going back down to Ron and —

“There’s a spell, to help them on,” Neville says, snapping his fingers as if some memory has just come back to him. “My great-gran got a bit stuck in her garden. Loved those roses so much, and after she passed she just didn’t want to leave them behind.”

“Do you know it?” Hermione asks, swiping at her eyes and turning back to her notes.

Before Neville can answer, the temperature drops again, and they hunch together while Harry casts. 

It’s much worse, the second time. The ghosts are louder, screaming bloody murder, and they seem to be kicking up even more destruction around them. Harry squeezes his eyes tightly shut, unable or unwilling to look as he feels the strong wind buffet at his shield and all manner of rubbish fling itself at them with deadly force. The attack feels more violent and it’s harder to hold the shield this time. The minutes stretch by agonisingly until finally the last of the rubble drops around them and the ghosts are gone. 

“Fuck,” Neville mutters under his breath as they sink back against the wall. “Harry, you better teach the rest of us that shield or we’re not going to make it through their next run.”

Harry knows for a fact it’s a breach of regulations to teach an Auror spell to civilians, but Robards can go fuck himself. Neville’s right, there’s no way he can shield all six of them like that again. He runs them through the wand movements quickly. Malfoy’s eyes are bright as he mimics them and is the first to cast it correctly. The others are still trying to get the hang of it when the noise starts up again.

“Bloody hell,” Hannah shivers as they huddle together for a third time. With Malfoy carrying half the weight of the shield it’s much easier. Harry feels the gentle press of his magic at the places where their spells knit and overlap. He finds himself focussing on that, rather than on the noise and devastation around him. When the ghosts flee again, he feels a reluctant tug as they end the incantations.

“OK, quickly,” Hermione says, rushing across the corridor. “The defence classroom will have a set of _Carlowe’s Complete_. Nev can look up his spell.” 

The others follow swiftly, before the ghosts gather the momentum to rain more havoc down upon them.

The Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom is as much of a wasteland as the rest of the floor. The cabinet that once helped them train against Boggarts is collapsed across the doorframe and they shove it out of the way. Hermione heads straight to the bookshelves behind the teacher’s desk to get the dictionary of spellcasting. The others keep practising Harry’s shield spell.

“I think it’s this one,” Hermione says, and Malfoy and Neville both move across to look at the book over her shoulder. 

“I honestly don’t remember.” Neville frowns at the page.

Once again, cold air sweeps through the room. 

“Let’s stay in two groups!” Harry calls, gathering Luna and Hannah closer to him by the door. “If we split up we’re a smaller target.”

Malfoy nods and begins to cast over Hermione and Neville.

The classroom gives the ghosts a horrifying amount of ammunition. Shards of glass, books, bits of equipment. They come at Harry with a ferocious speed. The ghosts whirl up to the ceiling, raining down on them the cage that had once held Lockhart’s pixies, celestial observation tools, and bony fragments of spell-damaged wood. 

The ghosts turn their attention away from Harry abruptly, and he thinks they’re about to leave through the walls, but then he realises that they’ve regrouped to circle the heavy chandelier like a whirling dervish above the teacher’s desk where Malfoy is sheltering Neville and Hermione.

“Run!” he screams at them, struggling to make himself heard over the noise of the howling ghosts, pointing and waving above their heads. Hermione glances up, a terrified look on her face, grabbing at the others. 

“Come on, _run_!” he yells again, his throat hoarse with the attempt.

Harry realises that Hermione and Neville can’t move until Malfoy does or they’ll be outside his shield and at the mercy of everything that’s being flung at them. And Malfoy is trying so hard to maintain the unfamiliar shield spell above them that he can’t do anything else.

Harry does it without thinking. Drops the shield he has over Luna and Hannah, striding toward Malfoy and the tornado of circling spectres, casting as he goes. He feels for the edges of Malfoy’s shield, picking up the quavering magic and boosting it with his own. It’s not something he’s done often and it’s an uncomfortable intimacy. Malfoy’s spellwork feels neat and precise, orderly. Nothing like the chaotic energy of Harry’s own.

“Let’s go!” he calls again as he gets near the flying morass of stone chunks and glass, keeping one eye on the wobbling chandelier. “I’ve got you.”

Hermione and Neville run toward him, his shield surrounding them like a protective bubble as they burst through the debris.

Malfoy seems stuck, staring with wide-eyed horror up at the ghosts above him and the iron frame as it swings back and forth violently.

“Malfoy!” Harry launches himself forward, trusting the strength of his shield to rebuff the flying wall of destruction. He tackles Malfoy bodily, flinging them both to the floor, and hears the ringing clatter of the chandelier striking the ground behind him. Wreckage rains down around them and then — silence.

The ghosts are gone again.

Malfoy pushes at Harry, who rolls off him. He’s shaking, and Harry can’t work out who is panting louder, him or Malfoy. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Malfoy whispers.

“Are you okay?” 

Malfoy looks at him, his eyes bright, and takes a shuddering inhale. But before he can say anything, the others surround them, helping them to their feet and bombarding them with questions.

“It’s okay,” Harry assures Hannah as she checks him over. “We’re fine. It’s fine.”

Malfoy seems just as keen to brush off the attention. “Quickly, before they come back. The spell.”

Hermione finds the page and starts to practice the wand movement. 

“You should change this line,” Malfoy says, pointing to part of the incantation. 

She scowls at him. “What? Why would I do that?”

“This is family magic,” Malfoy explains. “Designed to encourage lost souls to move on. It’s... _gentle_.”

“And?”

“Is there anything about these ghosts that seems particularly gentle to you?”

“What are you suggesting, Malfoy?” Neville asks.

“We need to _insist_ that they move on, not give them a choice about it. Change _imploro_ to _expostulo_.”

Hermione screws up her face. “I’m not changing a spell on the fly, Draco. We have no idea what that will do. It’s not listed as an accepted variant.”

“You should do it,” Luna says. “Draco knows what he’s talking about.”

Malfoy glances at her in surprise, as if she might be the last person he’d expected to come to his defence, but he gives her a curt nod of acknowledgement. 

Hermione opens her mouth as if she’s about to continue arguing, but suddenly the temperature plummets again.

“Trust me, Hermione,” Luna insists. “Do it Draco’s way.”

Harry lifts his wand and casts his shield, feeling rather than seeing Malfoy do the same. The refuse around them starts to lift as the ghosts burst through the wall screaming. Harry screws his eyes tightly shut, focussing on the spell. He hears Hermione begin to cast, hears the word _imploro_ and realises she’s ignored Malfoy’s advice. Nothing happens. If anything the noise gets louder and more agonised, and the attacks buffeting his shield increase in ferocity.

“ _Change it, Hermione_ ,” he yells, knitting his shield together with Malfoy’s as best as he can, hunching his shoulders against the increasingly familiar feel of his magic.

Hermione starts again, and this time she does as he suggested.

There’s a sudden cracking noise, like an Apparation, and Harry feels the attacks on his shield cease immediately, rubble dropping to the floor with a loud crash. He opens his eyes in time to see the last silvery wisps of the ghosts melting into the ether.

“It worked!” Hannah sighs, looking around the room in relief. “They didn’t fly away this time, they sort of faded out.”

Malfoy lowers his wand arm, and Harry notices that it’s shaking. Malfoy flexes his fist a few times, as if to try to contain the tremor.

“Let’s make sure,” Neville says, pushing at an overturned desk to clear a path back to the door. “We’ll search the rest of this floor, and then I vote we go back to the infirmary. Check on Ron, eat, and rest.” 

The rest of the third floor is desolate and empty. The path of destruction the ghosts left is the only sign that anything has happened there in a decade. As they retreat back to the staircases, Luna quietly closes each classroom door. 

It seems to take them forever to levitate one another back to the floor below. They’re tired and hungry when they get back to the hospital wing, and so they gather around Ron’s bed to eat. Propped up on pillows and with more colour to his features, he looks like he’s on the mend.

“How did you know to make that change to the spell?” Hermione confronts Malfoy as soon as he sits down.

“I didn’t _know_ ,” Malfoy says slowly, as if he’s trying to consider his words carefully. “The cadence of the spell felt wrong for what we were facing.”

“ _Felt_ wrong,” Ron scoffs. “What does that even mean?”

“Draco knows quite a lot about spells,” Luna says, pulling rocket leaves from her salad and arranging them along the edge of her plate like little green soldiers. “Tell them, Draco.”

Malfoy is staring at her in confusion.

“I tinker with spells. Or I have been. In France.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound evil at all,” snorts Ron sarcastically. 

“It started when I was trying to modify the Fiendfyre spell,” Draco goes on, tentatively telling the group the same story he’d told Harry. “And then, we were living in this village, in the south of France. I couldn’t get work. Not full-time, anyway.” Malfoy looks down at his hands, twisted together in his lap. He’s not telling the story in a manner intended to garner pity, but Harry feels a small stab of it anyway. 

“I did some day-labouring on a vineyard. The owner was struggling with a Phylloxera infestation, and the traditional eradication spells weren’t effective. He was going to lose the harvest. I just thought, maybe I could graft two of the spells together, the way they graft the vines. It worked.”

At this Malfoy shrugs, looking up at Luna. “From there, word spread. At first, other vineyard owners, but then lots of different people needed help with little things. They didn’t want to admit who they were getting help from, of course, and I could never charge very much. But it was enough to get by.”

“Help with what sort of things?” Ron asks, his tone still cold and prying.

“Nothing important,” Malfoy says dismissively. “Improving harvesting techniques and mending heirlooms.”

“Draco,” Luna chides, as if he’s only telling half the story.

“What do you know about it?” he asks, frowning at her.

“A few years ago, I was researching a story for _The Quibbler_. About this urban legend of The Spellmaker who was working miracles in the south of France.”

Draco scoffs at the word miracles. Luna seems undeterred.

“It was hard to find out if it was true, because every time I came across someone who claimed they knew someone The Spellmaker had helped, their friend or relative would clam up and deny it altogether.”

 _Of course they would_ , realised Harry with a start. No one would want to admit they were letting someone wanted for war crimes give them unregistered spells.

“But I kept looking because the stories were so lovely. That little girl you helped who was allergic to the spattergroit potion. And that memory reordering spell you made for the witch whose Muggle mother had Alzheimer’s.”

Harry feels Hermione inhale sharply beside him and thinks about how many experts she had to consult to reverse her parents’ memory spells.

Malfoy has gone bright pink and is looking down at his lap, shaking his head.

“Eventually, I found someone who wasn’t scared to talk to me,” Luna goes on. “And I found the village where you were living with your Mum, and I realised why no one wanted to tell me who The Spellmaker was.”

Draco looks up at her, startled. Harry thinks he looks like he might be on the verge of tears, but when he speaks, his voice is clear and questioning. “You found me?”

Luna nods, patting his knee with a smile. “I did. But once I realised it was you, I decided I didn’t need to write the story after all.”

No one seems to know what to say, least of all Harry. Of course Malfoy had always been smart, so it makes a certain kind of sense that he’d be able to do this sort of thing. But it leaves Harry with more questions than answers. Why was he in France? Why didn’t he and Narcissa come home when they could? Why is he back now?

Malfoy seems to want to be alone all of a sudden. The precise opposite of his younger self, who would have thrived on being the centre of attention. He retreats to his bed at the other end of the room. Hannah and Neville announce that they’re going to stocktake Pomfrey’s potion supply cupboard, but Harry suspects that they’re probably just hoping for a moment by themselves. Luna and Hermione clean away the remains of their picnic, levitating the plates and cups to the sink.

“Was he there?” Ron asks, his voice no louder than a whisper.

Harry looks up with a start.

“Hermione says she doesn’t know. I can take it, I swear. You can tell me. Was Fred there?”

Harry lets out a long sigh, his chest aching. “I genuinely don’t know either. I couldn’t look, I’m sorry. Just the idea of it was too awful. Of it being _anyone_ we knew.” 

Ron sniffs noisily and nods his head. 

“But look, even if he was, he’s at rest now. Hermione sent them all on.”

“She told me, ‘bout how your shields were the only thing that saved you all. Guess those Auror spells are good for some things after all.”

Harry’s stomach sinks. 

“Ron, I —”

“I know, I know. I give you a hard time about it and it’s not fair.”

“No, but I —”

“You know how much I was looking forward to it, is the thing. Being an Auror. Training with you. And when I realised there was no way George was going to be able to carry on without help, it just felt like my choices were taken away from me a bit, is all. And then any time I felt bad about that, I’d think about Fred, and I’d feel even worse.” He sniffs again. “And then I’d see you, all spiffed up in your uniform, front page of the _Prophet_ , doing something daring.”

“I’m not an Auror anymore!” Harry bites out, and the room feels too quiet. He glances around, but no one seems to be looking at them.

“You quit?” Ron whispers, incredulous.

Harry shrugs uncomfortably. “Quit. Was fired. Take your pick. It sort of happened in one ugly row where it was clear I wasn’t welcome back in any event.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“It hasn’t been going well for a while, actually. I mean, you know me. Never was very good at doing what I was told.” He aims for a self-deprecating laugh, but it comes out tired and a bit defeated. “Turns out the DMLE was a lot more interested in the idea of me than the reality.”

“But they’re always bragging in the press about how amazing you are! How many dark wizards you catch!” 

“All spin and nonsense from the PR department, which just pissed off everyone else who worked the cases with me. Particularly my superiors.”

Ron seems dumbstruck, as if Harry’s just told him something that’s shaken his whole worldview.

“I thought you were loving it,” he says sadly. 

Harry shrugs again. “Not really. Not for a while.”

“You could have said, mate.”

 _Not really_ , Harry thinks again. _Not for a while_.

“What will you do now? Carry on with this security work?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. Need to get through this first, don’t we?” He doesn’t mean it to sound morbid, but his best friend is lying in a bloody hospital bed, they haven’t seen sunlight in days, and death seems to be waiting for them around every corner.

It’s as if Ron is thinking the same thing.

“You’ll look after her, right? Until I can?”

Harry closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to think about whether the scratchy feeling behind his eyelids might be tears. 

“’Course, mate.”

“Is it true, then? Did sodding Malfoy really save you?”

Harry blinks rapidly and takes a deep breath. He glances over, but Malfoy has his back to them. He nods.

“First time for everything, ‘spose.”

“It isn’t the first time,” Harry finds himself saying.

Hermione and Hannah are both back then, brandishing potions and chocolate bars and extra pillows. Harry takes his exit, feeling a bit overwhelmed.

The feeling doesn’t exactly go away when he finds Malfoy reclining on the bed next to his, reading Hermione’s notes.

It was a lot easier when Harry could keep Malfoy in the same compartment he had him in since childhood: pointy, mean, and cowardly. But the last few days have made him realise that’s no longer possible. This version of Malfoy might be thin, but Harry would be lying to himself if he said his long limbs and pale skin and bright blond hair weren’t somehow irritatingly holding Harry’s attention. Maybe the only thing worse than acknowledging that there might be something attractive about the grown-up version of Draco sodding Malfoy is the idea of acknowledging that Harry might have been wrong about what sort of life he’s been living over the last ten years. What sort of man he’s become.

It’s irritating enough that Harry feels like picking a fight, but as he watches Malfoy practice the wand movements for the ritual spells, all he can think about is the cool feel of his magic pressed against Harry’s own.

He sinks to his own bed with a sigh.

“If you’re so good at making spells, why not do it legitimately? Why all the secrecy? Nott has a job. Parkinson, Zabini.”

Malfoy lowers his wand and fixes Harry with an appraising look, as if he’s trying to work out whether Harry is spoiling for an argument or not.

“Don’t act stupid, Potter. It’s unbecoming.” He shoves his sleeve back, holding out his forearm where the Dark mark is a faded, harmless-looking gray. “No one is ever going to hire me legitimately.” 

Harry knows Malfoy’s doing it to shock him, but it doesn’t have that effect. It just makes Harry want to touch it. He wants to know if the skin feels any different. Wants to know if it’s as dead as it looks, or if there’s still something dark and ugly thrumming underneath.

“It’s illegal. Unregistered spells,” he says quietly, as Malfoy covers his arm again. 

“Not like you can do anything about it,” Malfoy retorts. “Mr. No-Longer-An-Auror.”

Harry knew someone had to have overheard, but he wishes it hadn’t been Malfoy. He feels his face heat and picks at a loose thread on his blanket, refusing to look at him, not wanting to see his expression.

“Bit of an odd thing not to tell your friends,” Malfoy says quietly, and at that Harry does glance up, surprised to find him staring at Harry with a sort of puzzled concern.

“It’s none of your business,” he manages with a sigh, kicking off his boots and lying down to face the wall. 

He falls asleep to the whispered sounds of Malfoy behind him practicing his spells.

~

Ron is looking much healthier the next morning, but agrees with Hannah that he’ll spend one more day recovering before joining them again. 

“Today we just have to get to the library, get the book, and come right back.” Hermione makes it sound like an ordinary evening stroll. “It won’t take us very long.”

Harry clenches his jaw to refrain from commenting on her unwarranted optimism. The book Hermione needs is Rowena Ravenclaw’s diary from the time of the founding of the castle. Hermione’s plans for the ritual have all been based on secondary materials and she’s said from the beginning that she’s certain her calculations are correct, but no self-respecting magical historian is going to proceed without checking their work against the original.

The group gathers their things, deciding to pack light and leave their extra food and supplies in the hospital wing with Ron. No one has anything much to say as they retrace their steps through the third floor. Harry feels on edge the whole time, worrying that the ghosts will be back or that new ghosts might appear. He imagines the others are probably feeling the same way. He keeps bracing himself for that eerie drop in temperature but nothing happens. 

The staircase to the fourth floor is blocked with rubble, and it’s painstaking work to clear it safely with so few of their basic spells succeeding. Harry gets frustrated and starts to pull stone and wood away with his bare hands. Malfoy wanders off and slashes at a heavy velvet curtain hanging over a nearby arch that must have once covered a window. Harry’s about to say something cutting to make him stop pissing about, but he gets distracted by the way Malfoy is bent over the thick fabric, his wand moving gracefully as he casts. When he stands up, he has something in his hand. He tosses it to Harry, who catches it instinctively. Thick protective gloves: tough as dragonhide on the outside, velvet and soft within.

“Grapevines are rough little bastards,” Malfoy says with a shrug, turning back to make more pairs for the others. Harry doesn’t know what to say, so he just tugs on the gloves and goes back to pulling at the broken stone.

Time continues to feel elastic and unpredictable, but it seems like it takes more than an hour to clear a passage up through the staircase. Harry’s struck by how uncomfortable the lack of daylight is making him. Four floors above ground and still as dark around them as the dungeons. It’s an awful sensation that makes him want to fire _Bombarda_ at the walls until he can breathe again, even though he knows it won’t do any good.

The big double doors to the library stand open, and the space inside is quiet. The noise of their boots on the stone floors is suddenly silenced by the thick carpeting underfoot. Harry takes a deep breath, inhaling the familiar smell of old parchment and leather, transporting him back to hours spent here studying. Trying to find answers. Trying to understand.

“Mind the torches, we don’t want to start a fire,” Hermione warns, looking around at the toppled shelves and piles of books lying on the floor with a heartbroken, reverential expression. Given half a chance, Harry knows, she’d just stay here cleaning up until every last manuscript was back in its rightful place.

He doesn’t like how dense the air feels — like the calm before a storm.

“The diary will be at the back of the restricted section,” Hermione says, stepping around an overturned table and frowning at a charred pile of spell-damaged bindings. “Where they keep the rare books and first editions.”

“We should be careful here,” Malfoy says, as they move into the restricted stacks. He looks as uneasy as Harry feels, his eyes darting around at the teetering shelves.

“Do you think there will be more ghosts?” Luna asks, her voice unsteady at the idea.

“No, I think… _fuck!_ ” Malfoy exclaims suddenly, grabbing Luna around the waist and swinging her wildly to the right before lowering her carefully to the ground. “Nobody move.”

Everyone freezes, craning their necks to try to see what Malfoy is doing. He draws his wand and tries several spells that do nothing before one finally takes and a large plastic garbage bag wraps itself around a handful of books that had been by Luna’s feet. He twists the top of the bag off with magic and flings it several yards away from them. 

“ _Patrick’s Partial Poisons Primer_ ,” Malfoy says, as if that should be explanation enough. Everyone looks at him blankly except Hermione, who curses under her breath.

“These books are dangerous,” Malfoy stresses. “They were in the restricted section for a reason. That one in particular was about to dissolve the sole of Luna’s boot and then probably her foot.”

Luna retches a little, and Hannah gives her a quick hug. 

“They need to be looked after,” Hermione argues. “We could —”

“We could find the one you need and get the hell out of here,” Neville shudders. “We’re not sticking around to do a spot of _reshelving_.”

The others all nod in swift agreement. 

“Where’s the diary going to be?” Harry asks Hermione before she can get too wedded to the idea of protecting the library at all costs. She points to the rear of the room.

They pick their way much more carefully through the stacks toward the back. Harry manages to flip a large tome closed that has fallen open on the floor and opened some sort of shimmering vortex that does Merlin knows what. Malfoy kicks a copy of _Chiswick’s Pop-up Chess Compendium_ over before a vicious looking queen can haul herself out of the binding, casting to send it flying back against a wall.

“Here it is,” Hermione finally announces, triumphant. The glass case is dusty, and she fumbles with the ornate lock on it for several minutes, before reluctantly turning to Harry. He touches his wand to the keyhole and it clicks open. The little diary seems unassuming but Hermione handles it with great care, slipping it into a soft-looking cloth bag that she pulls from her pack. 

“Right, let’s go.” Neville takes the lead as they turn back to the door. “I’m ravenous and if Ron has eaten the last of the —” His ankle catches on an overturned chair, which knocks into the bookcase beside it. Harry watches as a very large, very old-looking book rocks back and forth on the top shelf and then falls.

As it hits the ground, they are surrounded by the sudden ringing sound of clashing metal.

“ _What is it?_ ” Hannah yells over the noise as they all raise their wands. 

Harry stares in horror at the cover of the book as it starts to move. _Wilenhall’s Wizarding Weaponry_. The bindings flap back against the floor and as the pages fan, flying from within them come knives, swords, arrows — an absolute _arsenal_ aimed right at them. 

Harry moves on instinct, taking up a battle stance and flinging spells as quickly as he can. He’s dimly aware of the others behind him, but he knows that what little defensive magic they have was learned here at school, which will be of no use to them. His shields are up and he finds himself able to deflect the smaller projectiles until he’s forced to duel with a particularly aggressive broadsword that’s almost as long as he is tall. 

Someone comes alongside him, fighting a lethal-looking sabre, spells clashing noisily off its blade. He feels the touch of Malfoy’s magic, boosting his shield the way Harry had done the day before. Harry is momentarily impressed that he’d been able to work out how to do it — combining magic is complicated — before the broadsword takes another vicious little feint and stab at him and he has to concentrate harder.

Behind them he can hear Luna and Hannah casting desperately — anything they can think of by the sounds of it — and they have some success, but it still leaves Harry and Malfoy as their only real line of defence as weapon after weapon pours from the book. Harry can feel from the ragged edges where their shields press together that they’re both getting tired.

“We can’t keep this up much longer!” he yells over his shoulder. “Hermione, you have to find a way to get us out of here!”

“I can’t...” she starts but trails off.

“ _Anything_ , Hermione, _think_.” 

A rapier slides through his shield and nicks his shoulder, and he hisses at the pain. 

He hears Hermione start to cast, so he tries to muster up the strength for a final assault. His wand arm aches, and his magic is feeling shaky and less focussed. Beside him, Malfoy’s neat, orderly spellcasting has taken on a wild, frenzied air.

Hermione finishes her spell and waves her wand and the book slams closed. The rapier drops to the floor with a muffled thud. A wave of magic moves out away from them, like the shockwave of an explosion, and he hears books slap closed in every aisle, soft thunking noises spilling out continuously for several long minutes.

And then silence.

“Brilliant, Hermione, what was that?” he asks, bent double, panting and exhausted but flooded with relief.

She lets out a sob, sinking to her knees. “Oh, Harry, it’s an _awful_ spell. I can’t believe I used it. I _suffocated_ them.”

Harry gives Malfoy a bewildered look, but before he can ask any more questions there’s a horrible noise behind them. Hannah lets out an unearthly wail. 

Harry spins around to find Neville lying in a spreading pool of blood, the ornate handle of a knife protruding from his throat.

“ _Merlin fuck_ ,” Harry breathes, rushing to her side. 

“Cast the stasis, Hannah, quickly,” he urges, grabbing her by the shoulders tightly. “Come on, he’ll be okay.”

Her wand hand is shaking violently and she can barely get the words out around her tears, but she manages it. Neville’s skin glows the same unearthly green that Ron’s had. 

“What do we do?” Hannah looks up at him, eyes wet and wide. 

“The Portkey, Hermione. _Quickly_. We need to go!”

Hermione takes off her pack, but doesn’t make any move to get the teaspoon. “We need to think about this for a second.”

“ _What?!_ No, we don’t!” Hannah cries. “We need to leave now. You guys get Ron and come back here. I can hold the stasis that long. We’ll Portkey together.”

Hermione holds her hands up placatingly. “Look, of _course_ Neville should go to St Mungo’s. I’m just saying the rest of us need to stay.”

Harry stares at her like she’s been replaced by someone who he absolutely does not recognise. If they hadn’t been living in each other’s pockets for a week, he’d assume she was Polyjuiced.

“Hermione, come on,” he says, standing up from where he’s crouching beside Neville’s prone form. “This is crazy. We’ve secured the route this far. You have the diary. We Portkey out and the Ministry can send another team to follow our tracks.”

“Right,” Hannah nods. “I mean, you can even come with them if you want, now you know what you’re dealing with, but with back-up.” 

“No.” Hermione is shaking her head, tugging at the cuffs of her shirt and looking down at Neville with a sad expression. “Neville goes, but we have to stay.”

“But we’ve done everything the Ministry asked us to, Hermione,” Luna argues. “More than, even. They can send a bigger team, and we’ll be able to tell them all about the problems we’ve been having with the magic, and —”

“There is no _back-up_. There is no _bigger team_.” Hermione’s voice becomes shrill. It startles the rest of them into silence.

It’s Malfoy who finally speaks. “No one knows we’re here, do they, Granger?”

Harry’s mind goes blank. _What_.

“Hermione?” Hannah’s voice is suddenly very small.

Hermione’s face flushes and her mouth thins into a tight line. 

“We’re here illegally, aren’t we?” Malfoy presses again. “Nothing about this little jaunt is Ministry-approved.”

Harry wants to shove him.

“Hermione, come on. Tell him that’s bullshit.” Harry turns on Malfoy, who doesn’t seem to be taunting at all. He wears a worried expression, ignoring Harry while he waits for some sort of response from Hermione. “Malfoy, you replaced our _Ministry_ liaison, for fuck’s sake. Of course we’re not here illegally.”

Malfoy ignores him. “That’s why Nott bailed, isn’t it, Granger? Got cold feet. Whatever you promised him wasn’t enough to risk his neck and his job?”

 _No_.

“Hermione?” Harry wishes he didn’t sound so questioning, but suddenly all the secrecy surrounding this trip is taking on a new and much more sinister meaning.

“I knew we could fix it,” she says defiantly, raising her chin at the rest of them. “I knew we had to try before they destroyed everything.”

“ _What?!_ ” Hannah breathes out in disbelief on a sob, bending over Neville’s body and burying her face in his chest.

“And I was right — we _can_ fix it. Now I have the diary, and we’re almost to the top of the castle. We can’t give up now!”

“But, Hermione, we could go to prison.” Luna looks sad, rather than angry, staring at Hermione as if she’s just disappointed her terribly.

“And even if we _don’t_ , you’ve jeopardised all our careers,” Hannah sobs. “I’ll never qualify as a Healer with something like this on my record. Harry will be sacked as an Auror.”

Harry feels a wave of discomfort at that. He refuses to glance at Malfoy. 

“Not when we’re _successful_ ,” Hermione keeps arguing, her voice pleading. “There’s no way the Ministry will take any punitive action against us with the castle restored. It would be terrible publicity. Harry, surely you agree.”

Harry finds himself gaping at her.

“I don’t even know who you are right now,” he manages.

“Look,” Hermione tries to reason with them again, “it’s terrible what’s happened to Neville, and he should get the care he needs right away. But there’s no reason for the rest of us to stop now when we’re _so close_ to succeeding. I need one night to check the ritual spells. Ron will be well enough to come with us tomorrow. We press on to the Room of Requirement in the morning, and do what we came here to do.”

“I want to go with Neville,” Hannah whispers, clutching at his hand.

“I understand that,” Hermione says consolingly. “But we can’t finish without you. And what will you be able to do at the hospital except sit by his bed?”

“How can you be so fucking _callous_?” Harry explodes at her, unable to believe she’s seriously suggesting that they jettison their injured friend and keep going.

“She’s just being practical,” Malfoy offers quietly. “Hannah’s not going to be able to do anything more for Neville than Hermione could have sitting by Ron’s bedside.”

“Don’t _you_ start,” Harry seethes. “Why are _you_ suddenly hellbent on throwing yourself headfirst into danger when you’ve never had the slightest inclination to before now?”

Malfoy stares at him. “Unbreakable Vow. Or had you forgotten?”

In truth, Harry _had_ forgotten that Malfoy had sworn to do everything he could to make their mission a success. He thinks about all the ways in which Malfoy’s stepped up to help in the last few days. How much of that was because he wanted to, and how much of it was because he had to?

“Luna?” Hermione asks. 

“I’m very unhappy that you didn’t trust us with the truth,” she says sadly to Hermione, who goes even redder in the face. “But I think now that we’re here I would like to see it through to the end.”

Hermione nods, and looks back at Harry. “That’s three votes to two,” she says.

“It’s not a fucking democracy!” he yells.

“Maybe... _maybe..._ I can complete my anchoring part of the ritual and also the Gryffindor part,” she pleads with Harry. “But without Hannah standing for Hufflepuff, we can’t do it at all. We need you both.”

Harry clenches his fists, furious at being backed into a corner like this.

“Let’s go back and get Ron,” Luna suggests, ever the diplomat. “We can see what he’d like to do, and if we decide to leave, we need him here anyway to come with us.”

Harry doesn’t think it’s going to help much. Ron will presumably side with Hermione. He wonders how much of this Ron knows about. Did he willingly help her trick the rest of them into thinking this whole thing was legitimate, or has she been pulling the wool over his eyes as well?

“I’ll stay with Hannah and Neville,” Malfoy says, dropping down to sit beside them, his back against a bookcase. “Let you all fight it out.”

Harry lifts up his wand and stalks toward the doors. He can barely look at Hermione right now. The whole thing is too unbelievable to contemplate. Out in the corridor, he turns left and stomps off to the staircase, but in his irritation he must get turned around because the corridor ends in a rubble-strewn set of steps going up to the fifth floor. Exasperated, he slaps the wall in frustration and spins around, almost tripping over Luna on his heels.

“Wrong way,” he mutters, pushing past her.

“I don’t think...” she trails off in confusion.

He strides past Hermione, ignoring her, passing the library doors and rounding the corner to find … a flat stone wall.

Panic starts to rise in his throat. He jogs back around the corner, glancing to the right and to the left, but there’s nothing. Dark, empty corridors and smooth unbroken walls. Stairs that go up. None that go down.

“Where are the fucking _stairs_?!” he yells, watching as Hermione and Luna pace back and forth, reaching the same ugly conclusion he has. The steps that they’d painstakingly cleared a way through just that morning have vanished.

They’re trapped on the fourth floor.

~

“ _Oh gods, oh gods_ ,” Hannah murmurs when they go back and tell the others. 

“That decides it then,” Hermione says unhappily. It seems even she’s not emotionless enough to see this as a victory, though she’s gotten exactly what she wanted. “We can’t Portkey out and leave Ron trapped in the castle, and our only other way out is to finish what we’ve started.”

Harry scowls. His skin feels prickly. It’s true that they’ve been more or less imprisoned in this castle for days, but he’s never felt it as keenly as he does right now. The idea of Ron being stuck on his own is terrifying.

Hermione gets out the teaspoon, and Hannah wraps Neville’s hand carefully around it. They stand back as Hermione casts the activation spell and Neville disappears with a pop. Hannah bursts into floods of tears while Luna tries to comfort her.

“Well,” Malfoy says quietly, so that only Harry can hear, “that was our only ticket out of here. Guess we have to pull this off now.”

It doesn’t help.

“Are you sure we’re safe right now?” Harry asks Hermione.

She looks around the library with a stricken expression. “Yes. The spell I cast deadened the magic in the books. It’s a horrible act of vandalism.” She almost seems more upset by that than anything else that’s happened today, which just unnerves Harry further.

“Think of all the joy you’ll bring to the restorers when the castle opens up,” Malfoy says with a small smile. It’s obvious to Harry that he’s being sarcastic, but it does seem to comfort Hermione a little.

Even with her reassurances, the books still feel threatening, so they withdraw into Pince’s office. 

“This is a mess,” Harry sighs heavily, sitting wearily on the floor, leaving Hannah and Luna the small settee. Hermione takes Pince’s chair. Malfoy paces. “We can’t contact Ron to see if he’s okay. We don’t even have all our supplies.”

Hermione takes out Ravenclaw’s diary and unwraps it carefully on Pince’s desk. “All the more reason to finish as soon as we can. The castle will open up and we can walk right out.”

“Excuse me for remaining skeptical, given we haven’t exactly been operating with all the facts,” he growls. Hermione ignores him.

“What are our other options, Harry?” Luna asks, her arm around Hannah who still looks devastated. 

“Maybe if we get to the roof,” he suggests. “Maybe we can find a way out. Through the Astronomy Tower, perhaps. If we were in the open air, our magic would come back.”

“We _think_ it would come back,” Malfoy cautions. “And there’s no reason to think the Astronomy Tower will be any more open than any other part of the castle.”

“Well, we have to get up that high either way.”

It makes him feel better to think there might be a Plan B, even if Malfoy’s right that it’s a little lacking in detail. He feels angry and impatient. He needs something to do. More than that, he needs something to do that’s not in Hermione’s general vicinity.

“Let’s go clear the staircase up to the next floor, then.”

Hannah gets to her feet.

“I didn’t mean you. You should stay here,” he says softly, but she blows her nose and shakes her head. “I need to be active. Take my mind off it,” she tells him.

They leave Hermione to keep working with her books, putting on the gloves Malfoy made them and forming a chain to clear out the rubble from the steps. It’s filthy, dusty work, and Harry’s longing for a shower by the time they’re finished and able to get up to the fifth floor.

“The prefects’ bathroom!” Luna points, trying to refasten her hair out of her face. “We can get cleaned up.”

“We can’t risk it,” Harry sighs. “If these stairs close over while we’re in there, we’ll be separated from Hermione.”

“So let’s go back and get her, then. She’ll want a bath as much as we do, trust me. Besides, I really want to...” Hannah trails off, looking down at her hands, her lower lip quivering. Harry realises to his horror that she still has traces of Neville’s blood on her. “All the cleaning spells I know don’t work.”

“Merlin, Hannah, of course, I’m sorry.”

He’s still half-convinced based on their track record that the bathroom will try to drown them, but if it does, at least they’ll be together.

He thinks Hermione will need persuading to leave her work, but it turns out the prospect of getting clean is too compelling for even her to turn down. Or maybe she’s just trying to mend fences with the rest of them. Either way, she tucks the diary back in its cloth bag and comes with them willingly.

Back on the fifth floor, Hannah gives the password and Harry finds himself holding his breath but the door slides open without incident. Inside, the mermaid-decorated stained glass has fallen to the ground, but the rest of the bathroom is just as he remembers it, right down to the enormous, foaming tub, still magically heated after all this time.

“Oh, that looks so good,” Hannah groans, immediately dropping her pack and tugging off her shirt. 

All three of the girls have stripped down and slid into the water before Harry’s even managed to sit and unlace his boots.

Harry finds himself distracted by the pale arch of Malfoy’s foot and shakes his head to clear it. He looks up to find Malfoy’s pulled off his jeans, but seems to be wavering before going any further. Harry thinks back to the lake. He assumed then that Malfoy kept his top on against the cold, but —

“You can take it off, Malfoy. Ron’s not here to ogle your chest.”

Malfoy frowns at him and it makes Harry burst out laughing.

“I’m serious. No one here cares about your mark.”

Harry folds the rest of his clothes and stacks them in a neat pile while Malfoy continues to dither. Harry sits on the lip of the tub before lowering himself into the warm water, letting out an indecent sound. 

He hears a splash behind him, but when he looks around Malfoy is already up to his bare shoulders in bath bubbles.

The mood in the group is subdued. As wonderful as it feels to soak out his tired limbs and get properly clean for the first time in days, no one seems to know what to say to Hermione. And everyone is acutely aware of Neville’s and Ron’s absence.

“I’m sorry,” she says, finally. “I should have told you all the truth and trusted that you’d have wanted to come anyway.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t,” Harry sighs. “When have we ever not believed in you completely?”

“We knew this was going to be dangerous,” Hannah goes on. “We thought we knew the risks coming in. It isn’t fair that you didn’t let us decide properly for ourselves.”

Hermione’s face is very red, even in the half-light. “Would you, though? Would you have come if I’d told you?”

“Well, there’s no way to know now, is there?” Hannah says sadly, boosting herself up out of the water and shaking out a towel off a dusty pile.

The others all get out slowly. Harry grabs another handful of soap to attack the grime under his fingernails so that he has something to concentrate on rather than the pale expanse of Malfoy’s back emerging from the water. He hears Luna gasp, and his stomach drops, trying to think where his wand is and what the threat might be.

“Draco! What happened to you?” she whispers.

Malfoy is standing at the edge of the bath, a towel wrapped low on his hips, drying himself with another. Suddenly, Harry knows with awful certainty why he hadn’t wanted to take his shirt off. 

The silvery scars spread across Malfoy’s chest like spiderwebs. Harry stares at the way they stripe across his pectorals. He wishes he didn’t want to follow them with this fingertips. He wishes they weren’t there at all.

Hannah looks confused. Hermione stays silent but looks at Harry with an oddly pitying expression that takes Harry right back to sixth year and makes him just as furious and embarrassed. 

“Nothing,” Malfoy says finally, tossing his damp towel on the bench and steadfastly refusing to look in Harry’s direction. “It was a long time ago.”

Harry stays in the water studying his fingernails until the others have all put on clean clothes and left the bathroom. It takes him that long to feel like he can breathe again.

“My dorms are along here,” Luna says when Harry comes out into the corridor to find them waiting for him. “We thought we’d set up in there.”

The Ravenclaw common room is just as much of a sanctuary as Harry recalls, the wide circular space somehow undiminished by the absence of windows, although Luna chokes up a little at the lack of the view.

“It was so beautiful,” she murmurs, her hand flat on the unyielding stone. “You could see for miles. All the way to the mountains.”

Hermione retreats into one of the dorm rooms, saying she needs the quiet to check over her work, but Harry suspects she also needs to lick her wounds. It helps lift the awkwardness a little with her gone though, so he doesn’t mind.

Luna takes Hannah to see her old bedroom, promising to cheer her up with the long-lost contents of her trunk, leaving Harry and Malfoy alone.

Malfoy kicks off his boots, sprawling out on a long blue sofa. In the flickering light from their torches, his expression is thoughtful. He’s grown into his ridiculous aristocratic features. The mean edges of him have softened somehow. Harry keeps thinking about his pale chest damp with bathwater, and the unrelenting irreconcilable urge he has to punch him in the face and kiss him at exactly the same time.

Harry digs around in his pack for a distraction, finding the bottle of Firewhisky that had absolutely not been on Hermione’s provisions list. He fetches a couple of water glasses out of a sideboard and pours them both fingers without asking. Malfoy accepts his gratefully.

“I’m sorry,” Harry sighs as he sinks into an armchair, taking a sip and savouring the peat flavour on his tongue. He doesn’t bother to explain what for.

“Don’t start,” Malfoy says, his voice low. “If we begin apologising to each other for everything, we’ll still be sitting here when this cursed castle crumbles to dust.”

Harry starts to object, thinking the litany of things Malfoy needs to apologise for is significantly longer than his own, but he can still see the silvery scars in his mind’s eye. He thinks about the years he’s spent never once caring where Malfoy was or whether he was okay. He feels the same clench of guilt he experienced when he saw Hogwarts like this for the first time. That he should have _done_ something before now. That it was somehow his responsibility.

“I’m so angry at her,” Harry confesses into the half-dark, deciding to change the subject.

“Seems to me that we’re all guilty of carrying a few too many secrets.”

Harry thinks about that. About Malfoy not telling the girls what caused his scars. About the way Harry still hasn’t told Hermione that he’s left the Aurors. 

“Malfoy, I —”

“Draco,” he replies, cutting Harry off. “I think we probably moved to a first-name basis about the third or fourth time we narrowly evaded death this week.”

“Draco,” he says, just to see what it sounds like in his mouth.

“She’s doing what she thinks is right, you know,” Draco goes on, gesturing with his glass. “She wasn’t doing it just to deceive you.”

“But I’d have come with her anyway,” Harry protests. “She didn’t need to lie.”

“ _You_ might have,” Draco concedes. “Given your general disdain for the rules.” He smirks at Harry, but there’s nothing mean in it. Harry finds himself smiling back. “But the others probably wouldn’t have.”

Harry sighs again. He’s right. Luna would have said yes because she loves an adventure. But Neville and Hannah have plans for their future that they wouldn’t have risked. It makes him ache with worry all over again.

“It’s turned out far worse than I’d imagined. None of this is worth it if one of us dies.”

“Even if it’s me?” Draco asks, arching an eyebrow at Harry, still smiling.

Harry thinks about second chances. About the cool press of Draco’s magic against his own. About the tight band of fear that wrapped around his chest when the chandelier was about to fall.

“Even if it’s you.”

One drink becomes two. Two becomes three.

“We should get some sleep,” Harry says finally. 

The Ravenclaw boys dormitory doesn’t bring on the same flood of emotions he’d felt in the Slytherin rooms. He and Draco move carefully around each other in the dim light, stacking their schoolmates’ belongs into neat piles against one curved wall.

“I’m going to sleep in Corner’s bed,” Draco decides, pulling off the dusty cover and shaking it out. “He was always the only attractive Ravenclaw.”

Harry snorts. “He was not.”

“You only think that because he went out with your little Weasley,” Draco retorts with a smirk, sliding out of his jeans and throwing them over a nearby chair. “Or was it him dating Chang that really got your goat?”

This needling feels almost familiar, but there’s none of Draco’s old venom behind it. 

“Neither,” Harry says, getting into bed. “Goldstein was just far hotter.”

Draco bursts out into a laughing coughing fit that forces him to sit up and catch his breath. It’s very satisfying.

“Really, Harry, you _do_ surprise.”

Harry feels his face heat and suddenly he wishes he hadn’t said anything. He never jokes around about it usually, and it’s like he’s just handed ammunition to a mortal enemy. He feels exposed and vulnerable.

“It’s not … I mean, I don’t —”

“Harry,” Draco cuts him off softly. “You don’t owe me any explanations.”

He makes a show of plumping his pillows for several long minutes, and then lies back and closes his eyes.

It takes Harry a lot longer than it should to get to sleep, listening to the even sound of Draco’s breathing in a bed a few feet away.


	5. Four

Harry’s throat feels dry when he wakes. He probably could have done without the third Firewhisky, particularly given he didn’t think to pack any hangover potion. 

“Is this meal breakfast?” Hannah asks when Harry joins them back in the common room. She’s pulling out food pouches and looking at the labels in confusion. 

“Merlin knows,” Harry groans. He should have scratched marks somewhere for each day to keep track. 

Hermione seems a little brighter today, though Harry suspects she hasn’t slept much, her fingers stained with ink. 

“You’ve checked everything?” Luna asks, and she nods.

“Yes. Everything’s exactly as we expected. The founders made sure the castle’s magic was established with strong protections woven throughout it. Over centuries that magic grew and evolved. It’s a big part of why Hogwarts was always considered such a safe space.”

“Can I look at the diary if you’re finished?” Luna asks. “I’ll be careful.”

Hermione nods distractedly, passing the small book over.

“My theory is that when the castle was attacked, all of that protective magic was activated. Some of it was deliberate, like when McGonagall sent the stone knights to fight at the gates. Some of it I think was automatic — the castle itself responding. That’s the magic that’s gotten out of hand. The castle doesn’t know how to _stop_ protecting itself.”

“So what’s the plan for today?” Draco asks, emerging from the dorm rooms rubbing at his eyes. Harry hopes his head feels worse than his own, if only because wishing a hangover on Draco is better than thinking about how good he looks sleep-rumpled and straight from bed.

“Ideally, we go up to the Room of Requirement.” Hermione points on her map. “But we need to get through the sixth floor first.”

At first, Harry’s glad she’s stopped pretending that it’s likely to be easy, but in fact they find nothing on the sixth floor at all. Just dust and rubble. It’s only passing the boys’ bathroom that makes him uncomfortable, and he quickens his pace as if he can stride away from the memory even with Draco right there beside him.

The staircase to the seventh floor isn’t badly blocked, and it takes them only a little time to pick their way over the fallen stone.

Once they’re there, though, it feels so much harder than Harry could have ever imagined.

The door to the Room of Hidden Things is closed, but it’s still right there in the wall. Blackened around the edges, soot stains spreading out from it across the pale sandstone. 

“Why didn’t it reset?” Draco asks, his voice cracking.

Harry doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about that last day. About hurrying Ginny from the Room of Requirement so that it could transform for him. About Vincent Crabbe still being somewhere inside.

Hermione doesn’t answer; she steps up to the door.

“Don’t...” Harry calls, but trails off. He’s not even sure what he’s asking her, but he really doesn’t want her to open it.

“It’s okay, Harry,” she says over her shoulder, placing her hand to the wall beside the door frame and whispering quietly.

As she stands there, the soot stains begin to retract back on themselves, shrinking in toward the wood. The blackened oak wrinkles and rights itself, becoming smooth and polished again. And then, as if it had never been there at all, the door disappears altogether.

“How did you —”

“When I knew we’d have to complete the ritual here, I spent a lot of time researching the Room of Requirement. It’s the most sentient space within Hogwarts, and likely the most .... protected.”

“You mean the most likely to want us dead,” Draco snorts.

Hermione’s shoulders tense.

“Now’s the time to be very honest with us, Hermione,” Hannah cautions.

“The truth is, I don’t _know_ what to expect,” she says, looking each of them in the eye. “The Room of Requirement has had very little consistently written about it because every witch or wizard’s encounter with it is so different. But it’s my belief that it’s at the very heart of the castle’s magic. Dumbledore always used to say _Help will be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it_. Do you remember, Harry?”

Harry nods, but he’s thinking about Dumbledore amending that statement. _To those who deserve it. Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living._

“I think that’s at the core of the Room of Requirement’s magic. The castle will always help if you ask,” Hermione goes on. “Part of the ritual we’re planning is _asking_ the castle to heal itself. To let down its barriers again.”

“How did you make the door go away then? What’s there now?” Luna asks.

“The door was to the Room of Hidden Things, which was damaged badly in the final battle,” Hermione explains. “I think that’s why the room hadn’t reset itself. My request was that the Room of Hidden Things be repaired, in the hope that the Room of Requirement was able to … override it, I guess, for want of a better word. Tuck it safely away again.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We ask it to show us the place where the castle was founded.”

“On the seventh floor?” Harry asks with a frown. “Wouldn’t it have been down in the foundations somewhere? A cornerstone or something?”

“Where the castle’s _magic_ was founded,” Luna corrects. “I was just reading about this in Rowena’s diary.”

Hermione gives her an odd look, but nods.

“That’s right. Once the castle was built, the four founders gathered in a room to imbue Hogwarts with its magic, so that it would live on longer than they would, protecting generations of students to come. We want to complete our ritual in that same room.” 

“Alright,” Harry says with a shrug. “Let’s do this then.”

Hermione places her hand back on the wall and closes her eyes, murmuring to herself for a minute. They watch as a new set of doors appears in the wall. Whatever Harry was expecting, it wasn’t shiny black wood inlaid with —

“Is that —”

“My family crest!” whispers Draco, horrified. He steps forward to run a finger along the silver dragons on either side of the shield.

Hermione looks confused. “Is it Slytherin’s crest as well?”

“I think that overcompensatingly large _M_ in the middle should tell you otherwise, Granger,” Draco scoffs as he reaches for the door handle.

“Wait, are we sure about this?” Harry asks.

Draco tugs the door open. “Only way out is through, remember?”

The room is just as dark as the rest of the castle, so they move inside cautiously, their torches aloft and wands out. But as soon as the door clicks softly closed behind them, they’re suddenly blinded by overwhelmingly bright light.

Harry gasps, screwing his eyes shut tight and then trying to blink them rapidly to adjust. They’re in a wide room with deep purple walls. The horrifying amount of light is coming from a giant overhead chandelier, somehow blazing despite all the other lights in the castle they’ve encountered having been out.

He blinks so much his eyes start to water. At one end of the room is a large marble fireplace, and above it a mirror with an ornate gilded frame. He recognises this room. He’s been here before.

“Draco —” he hisses, spinning around to find him staring around the room in open-mouthed horror.

“This is the drawing room,” he manages with a choked cough.

“At the Manor,” Harry agrees. “We need to get out of here.” 

Whatever the Room of Requirement has done, this is definitely not the place they want to start casting ritual magic.

Hannah and Luna are already back at the door.

“Hermione, come on,” Harry calls over his shoulder. “We’ll try again.”

“Not so fast,” he hears behind him, in a voice that chills him to his core.

When he turns slowly around, he sees the impossible. Stepping out of a shadowy corner is Bellatrix Lestrange.

“How nice of you to come back, Mudblood,” Bellatrix croons, sauntering towards Hermione, who seems frozen in place. 

“Hermione, come on!” Harry calls again, moving to grab her and that finding he can’t take a step. He tries again, but it’s like he’s glued to the floor. He glances around at the others and finds them all struggling as well. 

“We’re stuck, Harry,” Luna cries in frustration, pointing her wand at her own feet and trying a range of spells.

“Hermione, this isn’t real!” Harry yells, turning back to her. It was her request that conjured this nightmare; she must be the key to defeating it. “Bellatrix is _dead_.”

“There’s no filthy little elf to whisk you away this time, Mudblood,” Bellatrix laughs. “I’ll _Crucio_ you until you beg me to die.” 

“Hermione, listen! _She’s dead_. Molly killed her. We escaped from here.”

He watches Hermione tremble, her wand arm shaking by her side. Harry racks his brain trying to think. 

“ _Revelio_ ,” he hears Draco shout from behind him. “Hermione, cast _Revelio_!”

He watches her struggle, her wand arm lifting briefly and then dropping back down.

“You can do this. _It’s over._ We won Hermione! This isn’t real.”

Bellatrix lifts her own wand. “Shall we begin, Mudblood?”

Hermione’s arm shakes violently, as if she’s fighting against something holding it down, but she manages to overcome it enough to get her wand up to waist-height and whispers, “ _Revelio_.”  
There’s an explosion of light and a horrifying crack and they’re plunged into a suffocating darkness. 

“Is everyone okay?” Hannah calls.

Harry takes an experimental step forward and finds he can move again. “Luna, cast your lights!”

The familiar red and green twinkles illuminate a plain featureless room. Bellatrix is nowhere to be seen. Harry rushes forward to Hermione, who is still trembling, tears tracking down her cheeks.

“You’re alright,” he murmurs, drawing her into a hug. “You’re safe, it’s okay. It wasn’t real.”

“Let’s go. Now,” Draco snaps, yanking open the door and holding it, ushering Hannah and Luna back out into the corridor. Harry guides Hermione out, an arm around her shaking shoulders. The door closes behind them and vanishes into the wall.

“What _was_ that?” Hannah breathes, sitting down on the floor and taking a water bottle out of her pack. 

“It happened during the war,” Harry explains, accepting the bottle gratefully and taking a long swig before passing it to Hermione, who still seems too affected to speak. “At Malfoy Manor.”

Hannah looks around at them all with a frown. Luna places a gentle hand on Draco’s arm. His expression is shuttered.

“What did you ask the room for, Hermione?” 

Hermione seems to gather herself, drying her eyes and tugging at the sleeves of her shirt to straighten them. “I said I needed to see the place where the castle’s magic began.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t in my drawing room,” Draco sighs.

“It might be a bit confused,” Luna says. “It hasn’t been used in a long time. Why don’t I try?”

She gets to her feet and walks over to the wall, smoothing her hand along it and whispering quietly to the stone.

There’s a shimmer and shift, and a heavy wooden door appears. It has thick iron hinges and a haft with a giant lock hanging open.

“Shall we?” she asks, looking back at their little group.

Hermione swallows. “Before we...before I...”

Harry pats her on the back. “We can wait. Rest up a bit.”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s just — that seemed completely real to me. I could hear you all yelling but somehow, I don’t know. It still felt like it was actually happening. If it happens again, I need you to keep reminding me what to do.”

The others all nod. 

Once again, when they open the door, the room inside is dark. This time they’re even more cautious as they venture in, but the torches illuminate nothing until the door snicks closed.

Harry realises he was steeling himself for the room to light up again, but it doesn’t. If anything, it feels even darker, their torch flames casting only weak pools of light. It smells damp and feels cold, like they’re back in the dungeons where they started days ago.

“ _Fucking hell_ ,” he hears Draco hiss, and he spins to look for a threat. His heart sinks when he understands that he’s stuck to the floor again. It’s a horrible feeling, like a localised _Incarcerous_. 

“What is it? Where are we?” Harry calls, waving his torch around to get his bearings. The ceiling is low, with heavy wooden beams overhead, like a cellar. He hears a broken sounding cry and swings his light in the other direction.

Luna is on her knees, having dropped her torch on the ground. Beyond her, roped to the wall, is a battered and bloody Dean Thomas and a barely conscious Griphook.

Harry feels bile rise in his throat. 

On the floor, curled and pale, Ollivander’s breathing is weak and uneven.

“Luna!” Hannah cries, and Harry’s suddenly so grateful for her. So grateful that she didn’t live through these things. That she can keep it together when the rest of them simply can’t.

“Luna, this _isn’t real_. Dean is just fine. We had dinner with him and Seamus last month, Luna. At that vegan restaurant you like.”

Luna’s eyes close and she lets out wounded little sobs. Harry’s never once seen her lose her composure like this and it’s awful.

Hannah keeps calling to her, a constant stream of encouragement. “You can do this, Luna. Remember, just like Hermione did. _Revelio_ , Luna! Cast _Revelio_!”

Harry takes a deep breath and tries to convince himself to ignore their awful surroundings. Hermione is safe behind him; she’s not upstairs in pain. Ollivander is back at his store teaching wandmaking to his apprentice, Padma Patil. None of this is real.

“Come on, Luna,” he calls, when Hannah stops to draw breath. “We’re right here with you. _Revelio_. The spell is _Revelio_.”

She’s still crying, but he sees her lean forward and pat the ground around her, looking for her wand. 

“That’s it, Luna, it’s there to your left. Come on!”

Her fingers close around the slim piece of oak, and she lifts it, hand quivering.

“Yes, Luna!” Hannah laughs with relief. “Come on, cast it. You can do it.”

Harry barely hears the word coming out of Luna’s mouth, but it’s enough. The room plunges into darkness, their torches blowing out with a _woosh_.

He crouches down and crawls quickly across to Luna as Draco relights Hermione and Hannah’s torches. He wraps his arms tightly around her and she buries her face in his neck, sobbing.

“You were so brave,” he murmurs, stroking a hand down her back. “You did so well.”

“Let’s not stick around, Harry,” he hears Hannah call over his shoulder, so he puts an arm under Luna’s legs and scoops her up, carrying her back out into the corridor. 

“God, that was grim,” Hannah sighs, as Harry carefully lowers Luna down again to sit against the stone wall. Hermione produces a handkerchief and passes it to her, and she blows her nose noisily. “You all really had a bloody terrible time during the war, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t very nice,” Luna agrees quietly.

“I don’t understand what the Room is doing.” Hermione frowns at the wall. 

“Surely it’s obvious, Granger. It’s convincing us to stay the fuck away.” Draco sits with his knees tucked to his chest — curled up tight and defensive. Harry desperately wants back his relaxed sprawling posture from the night before, when the two of them were confiding in each other quietly in the dark.

They eat while Luna recovers. Harry picks at the reheated lasagne disinterestedly. His impatience is returning. Ron is stuck somewhere several floors below them. They need to get out.

“I’m going to try,” he says, pushing up to his feet and dusting off his hands. He strides over to the wall and tries to put all of the same will he put behind his previous requests of the Room years before. 

_I need the place where the castle’s magic began._

He steps back as a non-descript door appears in the wall. It looks more or less like every other door in the corridor. Definitely not like one that might be hiding either a cellar full of prisoners or a drawing room with a lunatic Death Eater. 

“Maybe this is it!” he says, encouraging the others to gather up their things and join him.

They step into the dark. The door closes.

Again, the light is suddenly far too bright. Harry blinks, shielding his eyes with his forearm, trying to let them quickly adjust. When he gets them open properly, he desperately wishes he hadn’t. 

The lamps on the walls cast a greenish light across the grimy white tile and the wet floor. Harry catches sight of his own reflection in the cracked mirror above the basin. Some part of his brain is screaming at him that he doesn’t look like that any more. Short and scrawny, school robes slipping off one shoulder. But he can’t focus because lying on the floor in front of him, Draco is bleeding out.

_Harry!_

“No,” he hears himself gasp. “I didn’t—”

Draco is shaking uncontrollably, and there’s just so much blood, soaking through the thin cotton of his school shirt and spreading in the water underneath him. It’s a horrible, vibrant red, so much worse than he remembers. 

_Harry, come on, focus!_

The blood floats on the water. Draco’s chest rises and falls but he doesn’t make a sound. He looks so pale, and he’s wet and he must be so cold. And there’s just _so much blood_.

_Potter, you idiot, fuck I’m right behind you, cast the damn spell!_

_Spell_. Harry thinks. That’s right. There must be a spell he can cast to help Draco, to stop the bleeding.

_Revelio, Harry! Salazar, it’s not me! It’s not real!_

He lifts his wand. What’s the healing spell Pomfrey uses on the Quidditch sidelines? He tries to remember. He has to remember, he has to help Draco.

_Revelio. Revelio, Harry._

That doesn’t sound right, but maybe that’s it. 

“ _Revelio_.”

A crack. Darkness. Harry lets out an anguished sob as the wounded Draco in front of him vanishes and he feels the real thing come up behind him and wrap his arms around him. “About fucking time, let’s go.” This Draco is lean and strong and smells like yesterday’s lemon soap and last night’s Firewhisky and, very importantly, _is not bleeding to death_. He lets Draco hurry him out of the Room before he bends double in the corridor, retching and coughing.

Hannah pours water onto a handkerchief and hands it to him to wipe his face. Both she and Luna are looking at him with terrible expressions of pity, and he hates it.

“Don’t —”

“Harry,” Luna whispers.

“Seriously, don’t. I don’t deserve — just don’t.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hears Draco mutter.

Hermione opens her book again. “We need to work out what the Room is doing.”

Draco hurls the plastic water bottle he’s been drinking from against the wall with furious force. It hits with a crack, splitting along the seam and spilling all over the floor.

Everyone looks at him in surprise. Draco’s shown virtually no emotion in all the days he’s been with them, and they’re all tired, upset, and frustrated, but his outburst still feels unexpected.

“We _know_ what the castle’s doing, Granger. It’s trying to get us to turn on one another.”

Hermione frowns at him.

“My _aunt_? My _cellar_? Me...” he trails off, but doesn’t look in Harry’s direction. “You think it’s a _coincidence_ that it’s showing you how much _pain_ I’ve caused all of you?”

“Draco —” Luna says, reaching for his arm, but he tugs it out of her grip.

“This is _my_ fault,” he spits out. “ _All of this_. _I_ let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts. _I’m_ the one who violated the castle and triggered its magic.”

Harry crawls the few feet separating them and kneels down in front of Draco. He puts both of his palms carefully on Draco’s knees. Draco blinks, all his anger leaking out of him, his grey eyes welling with tears.

“This isn’t your fault.”

Draco’s shaking his head immediately, swiping at his eyes with his sleeve. “It is, Harry —”

Harry gives his knees a little squeeze. “It’s not. We can _all_ make lists. _If only_ I’d been able to defeat Voldemort in the graveyard. _If only_ I’d found the Horcruxes faster. Is it my fault for coming back here and bringing an entire Dark army to the gates?”

“That’s not —”

“ _All_ of the blame lies at Voldemort’s feet, Draco. _All of it_.” 

His eyes are rimmed red and he’s staring at Harry like he wants to believe what he’s saying but just can’t. Harry very much wants to push his hair back off his forehead and kiss it, just to prove to himself that Draco’s really here: vibrant and upset and definitely not dying on a bathroom floor.

Draco takes a shuddering inhale, and then shoves gently at Harry’s arms. “Get off me, you great pillock,” he murmurs gently, and Harry rocks back on his heels, giving him space.

“Harry’s right, you know,” Luna says. “You’re not the same person you were then. None of us are.”

Draco manages a weak smile for her.

“All right, enough of this Gryffindor sentiment,” he huffs, getting to his feet.

“I’m a Ravenclaw, Draco,” Luna pouts.

“You’re all the same,” he sighs. “Anyway, I’m tired of this.” 

He strides across to the wall, slaps a palm against the stone, and announces in a frustrated shout, “ _Give me what I need_.”

Harry holds his breath for a long minute as nothing happens. But then the stone shifts and a door appears. It’s small, and very old. 

Draco seems as startled as anyone. He looks around at them, unsure. “Shall we...”

Hermione gets up first. “One more time can’t hurt,” she sighs. 

“It absolutely can,” Hannah complains. “You’ve all had a turn at whatever nightmare fuel the Room has conjured up. What if I don’t want to?”

“You can wait outside,” Luna assures her, squeezing her hand.

“Bugger that,” Hannah groans, drawing her wand. “The door will vanish and you’ll never come out.”

They each duck under the low beam and into the dark space, steeling themselves for the sound of the door to click behind them.

The change in lighting this time isn’t so severe. Warm lanterns hang around the walls, and a roaring fire burns in a wide grate. The room is very plain, the stone floor is bare, and the only furniture is a dark walnut table and four chairs.

“Is this —”

Harry looks around. The fireplace is made of rough-cut stone and carved into the wall above it is the Hogwarts crest. 

“Draco, you did it,” Hermione breathes, walking the edges of the room in awe. 

She was right, Harry realises. Whatever past versions of Draco they'd seen in the Room of Requirement, they’d never have made it to this point without him here and now.

Harry trails his fingers over the backrest of one of the chairs, feeling the carved figure of a lion. The one opposite has a snake. The magic in the room feels very old, like something buried deep and carefully brought to light; as if they were archaeologists dusting away soil over bone. 

“I thought it would be fancier,” Luna says, doing a little twirl in front of the fire. 

“I can’t believe that worked,” Draco laughs.

Hannah lets out a giant yawn, covering her mouth in startled embarrassment. “Sorry, I’m just shattered. And a bit relieved I don’t have to face the gauntlet of nightmares.”

“We should get some rest,” Harry agrees before Hermione can get it into her head that they should start casting complex ritual magic immediately. “Let’s go to our common room.”

“But —”

“We know how to make the room appear, Hermione. We’re not doing the ritual until we’re rested and ready.”

~

Being back in the Gryffindor common room is just as eerie as Harry feared it would be.

The well-worn furniture and familiar surroundings should be comforting, but the empty portraits are creeping him out.

“Just be grateful the entrance was open,” Hermione says, as he stares up at the deserted frames. “I don’t know how we’d have gotten in here otherwise with no one to ask.”

But even that feels wrong, the idea of this safe-haven standing open, unattended — _unprotected_ — for all these years.

Luna curls up in an overstuffed armchair with Ravenclaw’s diary while Hannah once again tries to sort out a sensible meal for them all.

Draco leans against the window frame, his back against the stone and his legs crossed at the ankles. Finding the room for the ritual seems to have restored his equilibrium and he doesn’t seem as upset as he had been. “How will we know if it’s Solstice?” he asks Hermione. “I have no fucking idea how many actual days have passed since we got here.”

Hermione shows him a series of little checkmarks inside the cover of her notebook. “This is my best guess,” she says. “We were aiming to conduct the ritual on the night of the Solstice because it would amplify its power. We won’t know for sure if it’s the right day, but it will be close enough to have some effect.”

Draco seems satisfied with that explanation and goes back to practising his part of the spells. Harry studies him from his spot on the sofa. It took the rest of them weeks to get their roles prepared to Hermione’s satisfaction. Draco’s had only days — hours, really, given everything else they’ve been contending with — but already his wand movements are clipped and precise in perfect order. Harry doesn’t want to examine the warm feeling he’s experiencing too closely for fear it might be pride, or something worse. 

Over dinner, everyone shares the same fidgety sort of energy. It’s hard to believe they’re finally here safely and on the verge of this final push. Harry doesn’t believe it will be easy, but the idea that they might be able to go home tomorrow is a lot to hope for. 

They don’t discuss sleeping arrangements, but after everyone has cleaned up, the girls head off to Hermione’s old dormitory leaving Harry and Malfoy alone.

Malfoy tilts his head at Harry. “I can sleep in here if you don’t want me to —”

“No,” Harry disagrees quickly. “It’s okay.” The idea of Draco sleeping in the dorms with him is definitely preferable to facing it alone.

The truth is, he’s expecting it to be awful, but actually it just feels sad. Seeing Neville and Dean and Seamus’ trunks. Dean’s bed as haphazardly made as ever. The empty name-plaques on the cupboards that would have been Harry’s and Ron’s had they turned up for seventh year.

“Do you want a drink?” Harry asks distractedly, hanging a set of robes up to get them out of the way.

“Best not,” Draco says, perching awkwardly on the foot of Ron’s bed. “I want to be able to focus tomorrow.” He seems so out of place here. Too tall for the room, somehow. Too bright against the dull red drapery.

Harry goes to stand up Seamus’ trunk from where it lies on its side. He turns it the wrong way and the contents spill further out on the floor.

“Goodness,” Draco snorts, picking up a shiny copy of _Whopping Wands_ and flicking through the pages. Harry feels his face flush to the roots of his hair as he snatches it back off him, tucking it in the bottom of Seamus’ trunk and steadfastly not looking at the writhing male torsos on the cover. Draco laughs. “No need to be such a prude.”

Harry finds a stash of candy and holds it up, desperate to change the subject. “Do you think this is still edible?”

“Chocolate frogs will survive the apocalypse,” Draco answers, putting his hands up to catch the handful that Harry lobs in his direction. “We’ll all be dead and buried and these little bastards will still be hopping around.”

Harry slumps on to his own bed, kicking off his boots and tearing into a packet. He’s not even hungry but it’s been ages since he’s had a chocolate frog. Seems appropriate, given they’re in his childhood bedroom. Even if his childhood self would probably punch him in the face for being here with Draco Malfoy.

“Why did you want to come back all of a sudden?” 

“Worried wizarding Britain isn’t big enough for both of us?” Draco asks, arching an eyebrow at him.

“No,” Harry huffs. “It just seems like...like if life has been a bit tough in France, it’s only going to be worse here, right?”

He waits for Draco to jump down his throat or tell him it’s none of his business, but he just sighs, ripping open another frog. “My mother isn’t well. She wanted to come home.”

Harry doesn’t really know what to say to that.

“Why did you hate being an Auror?”

“I didn’t hate it —”

Draco scoffs.

“I _didn’t_. There were parts of it I really liked.”

“The part where your stupid face was on the front page of the _Prophet_ every other day?” 

It’s exactly the sort of insult Draco would have flung at him when they were young, aimed to rile Harry up. And he would have succeeded back then. But right now the way he’s grinning at Harry — eyes twinkling, clearly teasing — just makes Harry blush.

“No,” he laughs quietly. “Definitely not that part.”

“So what will you do now?”

Harry’s throat feels tight. He hasn’t had this conversation with anyone, and he’s got no idea why he’s having it now, but there’s something nostalgic and out-of-time about being in this room. Something sheltered and private about being here with Draco in the half-dark.

“I don’t know,” he confesses, and it unlocks something in his chest to say it out loud. “I’ve got no idea.”

“Is that a problem?” Draco asks, curious.

“I’ve always…” he struggles to find a way to put it into words. “I’ve always had something in front of me, you know? It was always clear what I had to do. Find Horcruxes, defeat Voldemort, win a war, qualify as an Auror, hunt Dark wizards. And now…”

“Now you can do whatever you want,” Draco says. “That’s an extraordinary privilege, Harry. You should make the most of it.”

He feels terrible then. He has more Galleons than he knows what to do with, a house of his own, and almost anyone in the wizarding world would hire him. Draco’s the last person he should be moaning to.

“When we restore the castle tomorrow, you’ll be able to do whatever you want as well,” he says earnestly, and finds he genuinely hopes that it’s true.

Draco gives him a small smile. “Maybe.” 

“Why _are_ you helping us?” he asks. It’s suddenly important to him, to understand why Draco’s here. “It can’t just be the Vow. Why did you even agree to come with Hermione in the first place?”

“Well, either this will work or it’ll kill me. I don’t really lose anything either way.”

Harry chuckles, but when he looks over at Draco, his expression is sombre and it seems a lot less like a joke.

“Did you really see a Mind Healer?”

Draco glances up in surprise and nods.

“Did it help?”

“Yes. The first year or so was pretty dreadful. I couldn’t sleep; I suffered terrible anxiety attacks. She was a little old Austrian witch with a hunchback who stood for absolutely none of my nonsense.” Draco laughs a little at the memory. “Once my father was arrested we had to leave, so,” he shrugs.

Harry thinks about his own first year after the War, when he blamed the lack of sleep on studying for his Auror exams and channelled his anxiety attacks into duelling practice.

He reaches for another chocolate frog on the bedside table and his hand meets Draco’s.

“Sorry, I —”

“No, you —”

The silence stretches between them. Harry can’t look away. He wants to catalogue all of Draco’s features. The lock of blond hair that’s falling across his forehead. The thin silvery edge of a scar that peeks above his collar snaking over his collarbone. His long fingers toying with the frog wrapper.

“We should sleep,” he manages finally, wishing his voice didn’t sound quite so hoarse, forcing himself to get into bed and face the other direction.

He lies there for far too long convincing himself he imagined the fleeting look of disappointment on Draco’s face.

~

Hermione is champing at the bit to get started. She finishes her breakfast first and takes to pacing back and forth waiting for the rest of them. Harry refuses to give himself indigestion for the sake of a few extra minutes and takes his time, pushing the beans around on the plate. 

“I think you should sit down, Hermione,” Luna says, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. “I have some questions.”

Hermione seems surprised but returns to her armchair, notebook on her lap. “Do you want to go over your parts of the spells again?”

Luna shakes her head. “No. I want to talk about the ritual itself. I’ve been reading Rowena’s diary, and it seems to me that the spells we’re planning to use today are very unbalanced.”

They’re all used to Luna’s fixation with balance: with things _feeling_ right. It sits uneasily with Hermione’s focus on facts and data. Harry expects Hermione to sigh and roll her eyes. But instead she just gives Luna a dismissive wave.

“I wouldn’t worry, the diary is largely in Old English; you’ve likely misunderstood a lot of it.”

Luna is undeterred, crossing her legs underneath herself and smiling. “No, that wasn’t a problem. _Hwaet! No ic þa stunde bemearn, ne for wunde weop, ne wrecan meahte on wigan feore wonnsceaft mine, ac ic aglæca ealle þolige_.”

They all stare at her in shock.

“I like Old English,” she says, looking around the common room with a wistful expression. “I enjoyed studying here a lot.”

It’s all too easy to forget that Luna’s a Ravenclaw sometimes. People constantly underestimate her. Hermione, it seems, among them.

“The ritual is very unbalanced,” Luna goes on. “It requires a lot of magical power, but it draws that power from one of the four standing in the place of the founders.”

Harry frowns.

“Look, it’s one thing to learn a bit of poetry at school,” Hermione quickly regathers her composure. “But the diary has nuance. It’s more difficult to understand.”

“It’s not difficult. I can show you if you like,” Luna says serenely, putting her cup down on the floor and taking out the ancient little book. “You were right about the protective magic, of course. But you didn’t share with us the context. Rowena and Helga were very concerned about Salazar. They didn’t agree with his political rhetoric even then.”

Harry looks at Hermione, who has gone a little pink and is staring at Luna with a shrewd expression.

“They were worried that Salazar or one of his descendants might do something to endanger what they were building in the future. And their defence to that is woven all through the protective magic.”

“What are you saying, Luna?” Hannah asks, wearing a confused expression that must mirror Harry’s own. He doesn’t have a clue where she’s going with this.

“The protective magic was triggered when a Slytherin — Voldemort — breached the sanctity of the castle during the battle. The ritual to restore it requires sacrifice. The magic of the person standing for Slytherin powers the rest of the spells, and it’s not at all clear that person will survive.”

Hannah laughs awkwardly. “Then Hermione’s right, you must have misread it.”

But Harry just looks at Hermione. At the fixed line of her jaw and the way her hands are gripping her notebook, knuckles white.

 _What_.

“Hermione?” he asks.

She looks at him and he can see her mind racing. “It’s not —”

“Let me be clear about something,” he cuts her off. “I will not lift my wand today until I’m sure you’ve told us absolutely everything.”

She closes her eyes and lets out a defeated sigh. “There is a risk —”

“What the _bleeding fuck_ , Hermione!” he yells, shoving his breakfast plate off his lap and standing up, his heart thundering in his ears.

“Is this why Theo didn’t want to come?” Hannah asks, her voice shaky. 

Hermione says nothing, but her slightly guilty expression gives her away.

“He figured it out?” Harry yelps. “That you were planning to — _what_ — feed his magical core to the castle like some kind of lamb to the _slaughter_?!”

“It wasn’t —”

“And _what_ , you thought by bringing Draco in at the last moment, he _wouldn’t notice_? He wouldn’t have _time_ to realise what sort of danger he was putting himself in?”

He wheels around to glance at Draco for back-up because he has to be as horrified by this as Harry is. But instead he finds Draco sitting with an impassive expression by the fireplace, as unreadable as he’d been the first day he walked into Harry’s kitchen. Harry feels like someone has poured ice water down his spine.

“ _You knew_ ,” he whispers, his voice cracking.

Draco blinks at him and then looks away.

“What the _fuck_ , Draco?! How could you be this reckless with your _life_ , with your _future_?”

“What life?” Draco looks back at him, staring him down, voice cold and even.

“Draco —”

“No, Harry, you’ve got _no idea_. Whatever happens to me here, it can’t be worse than what I’ve already been through. It can’t be worse than realising I lost any shot at a moral compass before I even came of age. It can’t be worse than having pure evil move into my home and embrace me as a son. Living every day trying to avoid my deranged aunt or a psychotic werewolf. Having to go on the run because the alternative was life in Azkaban. Watching my mother cry herself to sleep every night over my pathetic excuse for a father. Struggling to earn enough money just so we can eat in any given week.”

Draco pauses to draw breath. Harry finds he can’t say anything at all. His throat is tight and the anger and frustration and betrayal is raging in his veins. He clenches and unclenches his fists.

_Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living._

“You say none of it was my fault, Harry? That I’m not the same person anymore? You think I want everyone to just forget?! Act like nothing ever happened? It’s the _opposite_ — I want to be remembered; for something _of worth_. I want to do something that _counts_. If that means I die trying, then so be it.”

In the silence that follows, all Harry can think about is the feel of the dusty carpet against his face in Dumbledore’s office as he came out of the Pensieve and realised he wasn’t supposed to survive. What it was like to stand with Draco’s wand in the chill damp of the forest and whisper, _I am about to die_.

“Fuck this,” he swears. “We’re not doing it.”

“Harry —” 

He turns on Hermione and it takes every ounce of willpower not to draw his wand. “ _Don’t_. I can’t even look at you right now. We fought our way in here, and we can fight our way back out. We’re not doing the fucking ritual. I want no part of this.”

He grabs a torch off the wall and storms through the portrait hole out into the dark of the corridor. The fury continues to surge through his body as he strides away from the common room. He wants very badly to hit something, but settles for finding the steps up to the Astronomy Tower, working out his frustration hurling bits of broken wood and stone out of his way. He’s longing for the feel of fresh air on his face, for some confirmation that the outside world even still exists. But all he finds at the top of the staircase are more blank, featureless walls. The Tower’s as closed in as every other part of the castle.

_So much for Plan B._

He sinks to sit under the telescope, knuckles bloody and clothes covered in dust. 

He hears Hermione before he sees her — knows her tread on the steps. When she catches sight of him she pauses.

“Can we talk?” she asks softly, waiting to see if he’ll take off her head. It’s still extremely tempting, but he nods. She climbs the remaining steps and sits, a careful distance away from him.

“I don’t know for sure that anything bad will happen,” she starts weakly.

“But there’s a significant risk that it will.” It’s not a question. He knows the answer. Knew it the minute he saw the look on her face.

“It’s a risk worth taking —”

Harry scoffs.

“It _is_ , Harry. Look around you! Look at the history and knowledge and the magic bound up in these walls. Draco _knew_ the risks. I didn’t keep them from him. He went into this with his eyes open.”

“So when you said he was doing this because it would have a _positive effect on his reputation_ you meant what, as a fucking martyr?!”

“Harry. It’s not as if Draco —”

“No,” Harry’s shaking his head. He won’t sit here and listen to her tear him down. Not after what they’ve been through. “Over the last week he’s hauled me out of the path of falling stone, shielded _you_ from murderous ghosts, fought by my side so that we weren’t all torn apart by swords, and found the room _you_ needed for your toxic little ritual. _He owed us nothing and he did it anyway._ ”

Hermione looks torn. “That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a reformed man, Harry. Of course he was daring — he doesn’t have anything to lose,” she argues.

“All the more reason for him to do _nothing_ ,” Harry spits out.

“He’s just saving his own skin,” she yells back. “He swore an Unbreakable Vow: he doesn’t help us and he dies.”

“ _He does help us and he dies!_ ”

There’s an awful ringing silence. He hates that they’re having this conversation here. He doesn’t want to talk about Draco’s courage and Unbreakable Vows in this place, haunted by all the tragedies Harry couldn’t prevent.

“When did you become this person?” he asks sadly, unable to recognise the friend he loves.

Hermione looks crestfallen. 

“What would you have us do instead?” she asks. “You know we can’t get back past the fifth floor — we tried. Ron’s trapped down there somewhere by himself, facing Merlin knows what. I don’t want him in danger any more than you want Draco to be.”

The comparison makes Harry uncomfortable; he feels the back of his neck heat. He looks around at the oppressive walls containing them and prods at the wounds on his hands. 

“Then we go back to square one.”


	6. Five

“We’re starting over,” he announces as they let themselves back into the common room. Hannah frowns at the state of him and immediately goes to get a bowl of water and her first aid kit.

“Did you fight a pile of rocks?” she asks with a grimace, forcing him to sit while she heals the scrapes and washes the dust off his hands.

“Sounds about right,” snorts Draco, but he’s studying Harry with concern.

Hermione disappears up to the dorms but is back a few minutes later with her pack. She pulls out and resizes a leather pouch from which she produces all of their planning materials. Every map and parchment, every draft of every spell.

“What are we doing?” Luna asks, putting the diary down on the coffee table with all the other papers.

“We’re going to rebalance the ritual,” Harry says confidently, hoping that this is a thing that can in fact be done.

“How?” Hannah asks, which is an excellent question.

“This is what Draco does for a living,” Harry shrugs, smiling as Draco’s mouth falls open. “What? It is. You take spells and you change them. You pick them apart and put them back together so that they work better or do something differently.”

“ _Sewing_ spells, Harry,”Draco responds incredulously. “Spells to make _rose thorns_ a little less sharp. Not ancient _fucking_ ritual magic!”

Harry is undeterred. “You reworked Fiendfyre, one of the most terrifying spells I’ve ever seen. You knew _instinctively_ what we had to change to send the ghosts on downstairs, you didn’t even have to look anything up. You were able to work out how to combine magic with me just by experiencing it, I didn’t even have to teach you. You can do this, Draco. I know you can.”

Draco’s mouth opens and closes again. A flush rises on his cheeks.

“Luna and Hermione will need to translate the relevant parts of the diary for us.” He points at Hermione. “ _All_ of the relevant parts, this time.”

Her mouth presses into a thin line, but she nods.

“And at every point in the ritual where we think the intention was to draw on Draco’s magic, we find a way to share it across all of us. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” says Luna happily, sitting down on the floor and sliding some parchment towards herself.

“Agreed.” Hannah pats Harry’s now-healed hand gently, whispering a _thank you_ against his hair as she goes to put the water away.

“Draco?” he asks, looking up at him. He seems flustered, still. A bit overcome. But he nods, finding a place on the floor beside Luna and spreading out their notes.

It feels like being back at Grimmauld Place all over again. Hannah finds and shrinks a chalkboard on wheels in an empty classroom and is able to resize it inside the common room. Luna writes out the elements of the ritual in her neat, flowing handwriting, and Draco and Hermione immediately set to dismantling it, covering the board in coloured chalk arrows, crossing outs, smudged erasings, and cramped notes with new suggestions. 

Over the course of the day, Harry is dispatched to look for all manner of things: an arithmancy textbook, a star chart, a Latin dictionary. They eat lunch while they work and Harry keeps getting distracted by the way Draco continues writing, even with a sandwich stuffed inelegantly in his mouth. 

Another hour and they’re ready to start practicing, pushing back the furniture to create space and drilling each other over and over again. By the time dinner rolls around, they each have the changes to their spells mastered and they’re all exhausted. 

“Are we sure about this?” Harry asks, slumped on a couch. “I don’t want to go ahead if there’s still risk.” 

Hermione looks even more tired than the rest of them, but she seems unsurprised by his question. She pulls her hair back from her face and refastens the elastic. “We can’t eliminate the risk completely,” she says honestly. “Our magic is underpowered in here as it is.”

Harry’s already shaking his head, staggered by the strength of his own reaction. “No, that’s not good enough.”

“Harry —” 

“No, Draco.” Harry turns to look at him, sitting there pink-cheeked and embarrassed at Harry’s attention. “I won’t do it if you’re not safe. If you can’t tell me it’s safe, we start over. We find a better way.”

“Harry, listen to me.” Draco gets up and comes over to sit beside him on the dusty sofa. Suddenly, it’s Harry who feels flushed and uncomfortable. He doesn’t really want to have this conversation here in front of the girls. It feels fragile. Private.

“We _can’t_ be sure that we’ve made all the changes we need, but that’s okay. I’m prepared to go ahead.”

Harry hates it. He hates the idea that they might be putting him in danger. He doesn’t care what Hermione has to say about the castle, it isn’t worth it. There _must_ be a way to get back to Ron and get outside without attempting this. Without —

“It’s going to work,” Luna says, stretching out her back in a contorted looking pose on the floor. “We’ve all been very dedicated today and I think Rowena would be very proud of us.”

Harry runs his palm over the Gryffindor insignia embroidered on the back of the sofa. It’s quite a thought — trying to fulfill the founders’ hopes for the castle.

“Especially you, Hermione,” Luna continues, tucking her knees to her chest and rolling up to sit. “I know it must be hard to take the time to try a different path not knowing where Ron is.”

Hermione is speechless. Luna’s confidence in them all in spite of themselves is always disarming.

“I’m going to get some sleep now.” She picks up a torch and pads quietly out of the room.

Harry helps Hannah tidy away the dinner things while Draco and Hermione go over their notes one more time.

“Are you still very angry?” Hannah asks.

He thinks about Neville lying on the library floor; about the way she’d sobbed and clutched at his hand.

“Aren’t you? After...everything?” 

Hannah sighs, stacking the clean plates on the sideboard. “I think I would have been, earlier. But Harry, being in the Room with you all yesterday — seeing what you went through during the War. I think I can understand why she wouldn’t have prioritised _any_ Slytherin’s safety, let alone Draco’s.”

Harry bristles, ready to come to his defence again, but Hannah places a gentle hand on his arm.

“Look, Harry. Even she can see how wrong she was now.” She gestures over at the sofa, where Hermione is listening to Draco, bright-eyed and attentive, nodding enthusiastically at whatever he’s saying and pointing at something in Rowena’s diary. “Luna’s right, it’s going to work. Those two can do anything they put their minds to.”

She gives him a quick one-armed hug and grabs a torch.

“Come on, Hermione, it’s time for bed.”

Hermione looks like she’s about to object, but then she glances at Harry. “I’ll be up in a minute, Hannah.”

Draco excuses himself quietly and leaves the two of them alone.

“I know you want me to apologise,” she says, stacking her notes into a neat pile.

“Not if you don’t mean it,” he frowns, sinking back into an armchair, picking at the label on his water bottle.

“I _am_ sorry,” she says sincerely. “I just want you to understand that I was so focussed on the castle, Harry. So _determined_ to get this right. It simply didn’t occur to me to do anything other than what the founders intended. It certainly didn’t occur to me that they might have been wrong.” 

The thing is, he _knows_ Hermione’s tendency toward single-minded purpose. And he knows just how much Hogwarts means to her. To all of them.

“If the last week has taught me anything,” she continues, “it’s that Hogwarts needs _all_ of us. Voldemort wasn’t the fault of Slytherin or his line or his house. And I shouldn’t have kept the details of the ritual from you all. If I’d explained sooner, we might have worked out an answer before we even set off.”

She rubs the back of her neck. “This castle is my life’s work, Harry. Just as hunting Dark wizards is yours, and —”

Harry lets out a humourless laugh.

Hermione looks offended. “Don’t be so condescending. Just because —”

“I’m not laughing at you, Hermione.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I’m not an Auror any more, and the idea that hunting Dark wizards might be my _life’s work_ is frankly depressing.”

“What do you mean you’re _not an Auror any more_?” 

She looks confused rather than shocked.

“Exactly that. My last day on the force was two months ago. I haven’t been on a leave of absence. I don’t work there anymore.”

Hermione doesn’t seem to know what to say. They sit in silence for several long minutes.

“The irony isn’t lost on me, but...why did you feel you couldn’t tell us?” she asks finally. 

“Because I don’t know who I am if I’m not this,” he shrugs, finishing the water in a long swallow and putting the bottle aside. He immediately regrets it, wanting something to do with his hands.

“Oh _Harry_ ,” she whispers sadly. “ _I_ know who you are. From the time you first found out you were a wizard — you could have swanned around like a celebrity, trading on your reputation. And instead you made friends with Ron and me. With Hagrid; with Luna. You taught us all to protect ourselves. You gave _everything_ you had to the fight against Voldemort. You literally laid your _life_ down for us, Harry. Your heart is _so_ enormous, and you believe so fully in the good in people that in your eyes, _everyone_ is capable of redemption.”

“Draco —”

“No, you were right,” she cuts him off, waving his protest away before he can even voice it. “He’s clever and committed. His spellwork is incredible. And even if _none_ of that were true, it still would have been wrong to endanger him in the ritual. To put anyone in that position. I really am sorry.”

Harry’s relieved to hear her say it. The idea that she’d become a completely unrecognisable person was too hard for him to comprehend.

“Is it going to work?”

She scrubs at her eyes tiredly. “It has to, Harry,” she answers with a small smile. “What other choice is there?”

He stands up then and puts out his hand and she takes it, letting him tug her up to her feet and into his arms. He hugs her tightly. They’ve been through so much together, the two of them. They’ll get through this as well.

“Let’s get some sleep.”

He climbs the tight spiral stairs to the dorm wearily. Draco is lying propped up in Ron’s old bed, reading. 

“Everything okay?” he asks, putting his notes aside and arching an eyebrow at Harry.

Harry sits down on the edge of his own narrow bed. Harry’s chest feels too tight. He needs all of them to be okay. To get through this and to find Ron and to get back outside to Neville.

“Tell me you’ve fixed it. Here, just the two of us. Be honest with me.”

“I think so,” Draco says carefully. “I didn’t come into this to wanting to die, Harry. But you’re right that I was … _reckless_ about the outcome. I don’t feel that way now, and it’s got nothing to do with the Vow.”

“But —”

“Harry, you can’t protect us from everything. There’s any number of things that might go wrong tomorrow. The roof of this foresaken fucking castle could fall in on us in our sleep — nothing is guaranteed. But I promise you I’m going to do my best to make sure we _all_ make it out of here in one piece.”

Harry worries his lower lip between his teeth, looking at Draco. At his grey eyes and pale lashes; the chalkdust in his hair and the smudge of ink on his cheek. Harry can’t stand the thought of losing him when this — whatever the fuck _this_ is — is only just beginning. 

“Promise?”

Draco nods.

Harry sighs, kicking off his boots and standing up to get changed for bed. But then Draco tugs at his hand, pulling him slightly off balance, and his other palm is warm on the back of Harry’s neck as he surges up and captures Harry’s mouth in a kiss.

Draco tastes like chocolate frogs and a future Harry can’t even imagine for himself. A future he suddenly _desperately_ wants. He kisses with passion and urgency, tugging Harry down on top of him. Harry feels lost in the heat of him through the thin covers, the cool touch of his fingertips sliding under Harry’s shirt and along his lower back.

“Wait,” he manages, pulling back, breathless.

Draco blinks, his cheeks flushed and his lips wet. 

Harry’s brain feels like it’s short-circuiting, but this seems too important. “I don’t want to…”

Draco’s expression closes in like a stormfront. “Of course,” he says quietly, pushing Harry back and rearranging the covers defensively. “My apologies for misreading the situation.”

“What —”

“No, I shouldn’t have interpreted your concern for my well-being as anything more than —”

Harry cuts him off with another kiss. “Hush, you annoying prick. It’s not that I don’t _want_ to.”

Draco’s eyes dart back and forth, studying Harry’s face, a small frown creasing his forehead that Harry desperately wants to smooth away.

“I just don’t want it to be like _this_. I don’t want it to be here, in this castle full of ghosts — _metaphorical_ ghosts, I mean, though the real ones were no picnic either — and I don’t want it to be because we’re not sure about tomorrow.”

Draco finally relaxes again, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Trust you to be a sodding romantic. Anyone else would be up for frantic, desperate, end-of-the-world sex.” 

Harry laughs softly. “I’d just like a little less _we might be about to die_ , and a little more _I’d like to build a future with you_.”

“Is that really what you want? A future with me?”

Harry looks around the room. At the faded red and gold hangings and the little four poster bed in which he spent so many years. He thinks about the agonising nightmares and the fear. About the overwhelming fatalistic sense of obligation. He thinks it might be time to leave some of it here.

He looks back at Draco — brilliant and resilient and brave — who desperately wants to start over just as much Harry does. 

He nods.

Draco digs around under his pillow for his wand, stretching the bed out a few extra feet. Harry tugs off his jeans and slides under the covers, tucking himself against his chest.

“Do you need to keep reading?” he asks, looking at the notes.

“No,” Draco whispers, putting them on the nightstand and extinguishing the torch. He presses a soft kiss to Harry’s forehead in the dark. “We’re ready.”

~

Harry wakes first. He lies quietly for a long time, Draco warm beside him. He tries to relax, chasing after sleep as it slips away from him. But his brain is racing and adrenaline is fizzing in his veins and eventually he gives up and slides carefully out from under the covers. 

Luna is the only one in the common room when he comes downstairs, sitting in front of the empty fireplace with a mug of tea. 

“Hello,” she says with a smile. 

He’s suddenly absurdly grateful for her. For her calm presence and canny intelligence and her unending optimism. 

“Thank you. For speaking up yesterday.”

Luna looks at him enigmatically, her head tilted to one side. “We all want the chance to be better, Harry.”

Harry doesn’t know if she’s talking about Hermione, or Draco, or Harry himself. But he’s not really sure it even matters. 

One by one, the others join them and they eat breakfast and pack their things. 

“What do you think will happen, after?” Hannah asks, looking around the common room. 

Hermione, who until yesterday had been so full of confidence — so _sure_ of her mission — just shakes her head and says honestly, “I have no idea.”

Somehow it feels better to hear it said out loud.

They walk in silence back to the blank stretch of wall in the corridor. Draco takes a deep breath and announces — a little less angrily this time — “Show us the room again.”

The door appears just as it had, and Harry exhales in relief when they let themselves in to find they’re in the right place. The fire is still burning happily in the grate, a feat of magic he has no way of understanding, and it casts warm shadows on the bare walls. He looks up at the Hogwarts crest above the stone mantel and hopes with all his might that they can achieve what they’ve come here to do.

Hermione pulls candles from her pack and sets them out on the floor in a wide circle. Draco follows behind her, lighting each one with his spell.

They take their places, facing each other like the four points of the compass with Hermione as anchor in the centre.

“Are we ready?” she asks quietly, and when they’ve all nodded and taken out their wands, “Then let’s begin.”

One of their biggest fears as they prepared yesterday was that the magic just wouldn’t work, dampened by whatever the castle has been doing to them all week long. But as soon as they start to incant, Harry feels it flow through him, sparking and dancing under his skin. It feels good, after days of casting more or less nothing but shields and spells to reheat food. This feels expansive: generative, filled with possibility.

The first part of the ritual requires each of the four of them to call on their respective founders, with Hermione drawing and channelling the magic together. The language of the spells is archaic and feels clumsy in his mouth, but he’s practised this part so often and for so long it comes automatically to him. Words of determination, bravery, and courage. He finds his mind wandering to Godric Gryffindor’s home village, the place where his own parents lived and died. He thinks about the man’s sword and how it had come to Harry’s aid more than once. 

He finishes the first of the incantations and waits for the others to do the same. One by one, they fall silent until only Hermione is still casting. Harry looks to his left, where Draco is standing, eyes closed, his wand held loosely at his side. He looks calm, relaxed. It helps Harry to breathe a little easier.

The second part of the ritual begins and the four of them now have to bring their spells into alignment. Draco’s magic knits neatly together with his own, closing the circle far more cleanly than Theo’s ever did during their rehearsals. Harry has to force himself to focus so that he doesn’t get distracted by the intimate clasp of it, as all-encompassing as the feeling of Draco’s arms around him the night before.

Then all of a sudden, he’s forced to focus for an entirely different reason.

The group’s combined magic flows out past the circle of candles and slams into the walls of the Room like an explosion, shaking dust loose in all directions. Across the circle, Luna gasps, coughing as a cloud engulfs her, but continues to hold her part of the spell.

The dust settles, but it feels like the least of their worries as a rumbling sound starts to shake through the walls, rolling like thunder. Or an approaching earthquake. The stone floor starts to move underneath them and for a horrible moment Harry imagines it just melting away, leaving them to fall seven floors to their deaths. The walls around them feel like they’re bending inwards, as if they might just break loose and crush together, destroying them all in the process. Harry finds he’s yelling his incantations to be heard over the noise and he realises the others are doing the same. His mind races, trying to determine how he can hold a shield over all of them at the same time, but knowing he can’t. 

_The only way out is through._

He brings his full attention back to the spell and can feel the impact the castle is having on the others. Luna is managing to hold her corner steady but both Hannah and Draco are having trouble. Harry pushes the edges of his magic out to the left and right, trying to bolster the places where they’re struggling, weaving his power into the gaps in their own.

Draco stumbles over his words for a second, but then Harry sees him square his shoulders and redouble his efforts. Hannah takes a deep breath. The ritual’s magic stabilises again, and Hermione nods at Harry in gratitude. But they only have a second to relax, because the castle is definitely not finished with them yet.

A howling wind begins to build around them. It feels more threatening than the one the ghosts had tormented them with days ago, and it crashes the furniture in the room back against the walls with splintering force, extinguishing the fire. Somehow, Hermione’s ceremonial candles stay lit, even as their flames desperately bend and flicker. The floor shudders again, almost knocking Harry off his feet, but he manages to stay standing. It’s harder and harder to be sure he’s saying the words in the right order with bright flashes of magic bouncing down off the walls and sparking out around them.

The castle seems to be fighting them with everything that it has. The noise becomes unbearable, like the sound of a raging battle that he can’t see but can definitely feel. He has no idea how Hermione’s circle is holding. The five of them seem to be in the eye of a catastrophic magical storm.

Opposite him — over Luna’s shoulder — the flashes of light begin to coalesce. Harry tries to concentrate on what he’s doing, but the apparition is becoming more tangible and it’s hard to not stare at it. Suddenly, he realises to his shock that he _recognises_ it. That he recognises _her_.  
Standing behind Luna, looking so much like her daughter Helena, who’d helped Harry so many years ago, is a spectral Rowena Ravenclaw. 

Harry sucks in a breath, head snapping around to look at the others. Hermione is similarly wide-eyed, her wand shaking. Unlike ghosts, these visions of the founders are in vivid colour, magic fairly pouring off them in all directions. Salazar Slytherin’s white beard spills down over his bright green robes. Helga Hufflepuff’s hair falls in rich auburn ringlets on the shoulders of her yellow dress. Behind Harry, wearing a ruby-encrusted scabbard and kind smile, is Godric Gryffindor.

For one terrifying moment, Harry thinks the founders might be here to stop them, but then it’s as if the castle’s rebellion starts to quiet a little. The floor feels more solid underfoot, and he no longer feels like he needs to shout to be heard. Which is just as well, because they’re moving into the final, most complex part of the ritual. The part they’ve only just finished altering. 

It’s eerie to try to remember the words he needs to say with four ancient figures standing silently around them. Harry closes his eyes to make sure he’s using the new wand movements he learned yesterday correctly. When he opens them again, he wishes he hadn’t. Rowena and Helga’s benevolent expressions have suddenly turned angry and they’ve spun to face Salazar, their own wands out. 

“ _This is exactly what we feared_ ,” Rowena says, her voice echoing off the walls, and Harry feels the room shudder again, stone groaning and shifting.

“Keep going!” cries Hermione, and he realises that all four of them have stopped their spells to stare in shock. Harry hurriedly lifts his wand and picks up where he left off, feeling Luna, Hannah, and Draco do the same.

“ _The castle is critically wounded and it is the fault of your house_ ,” Godric says to Salazar, his supernatural voice ringing in Harry’s ears.

Harry feels the circle of their spells start to bend, as if the ritual is starting to tip over. As if all of the energy in the magic is being drawn from … _Draco_.

“No!” Harry yells, voice hoarse. The whole circle feels suddenly unbalanced. Just seconds ago he’d been extending his own magic toward Draco and Hannah to prop them up. Now he feels an extraordinary amount of Draco’s magic flowing back into him, far in excess of what he needs, washing over him like a tidal wave. “Draco, _stop_. What are you doing?

Helga is scowling openly at Salazar now. “ _The damage to the castle was caused by Slytherin’s house. The castle’s restoration will also come from Slytherin’s house._ ”

Draco falls to his knees, his eyes closed, his whole body trembling.

“ _Draco, you promised!_ ” he hears himself screaming.

“Focus, Harry!” Hermione yells at him. “I’ve got this. _Hold the spell_.”

And he _wants_ to believe her, he really does, but this is exactly what she _planned_ to happen from the very beginning. If he stops the ritual incantation, he can help Draco. He can —

“ _Harry!_ ” she shouts again. “ _Trust me_.” 

He looks at her, hair escaping its band like a wild halo around her head. Her expression is fierce and determined. He knows with absolute certainty that she will not let him down.

He nods, and though it takes everything he has, he picks up his corner of the enchantment and continues to cast. He watches in terror as the figure of Slytherin steps forward and touches Draco on the shoulder, but somehow it gives him the strength to stand up again, and Harry feels the shaky corner of the spell he’s responsible for take again and hold.

“Hogwarts was built on _four_ strong foundations,” Hermione declares, chin up and looking defiantly around at the visions, who seem surprised to be addressed directly. The three turn their attention from Slytherin but do not lower their wands. Hermione doesn’t waver.

“ _All four_ houses came here to restore the castle,” she says, her voice clear.

Hermione casts in a circle on the floor in front of her, and a shimmering pond appears, floating over the stone. Then she touches her wand to her forehead, drawing out ethereal strands of her own memory and dropping them into the pond. Her memories spring fully-formed into view, projected in the air like they’re all somehow suddenly _inside_ a Pensieve. Harry sucks in a sharp breath as he sees them all in the kitchens, crouched by the door.

“ _Hold the spell!_ ” Hermione hisses, and he shakes himself, forcing his concentration back into the incantation.

The founders seem intrigued, watching Hermione’s ephemeral projection as Hannah leads the group in distracting the kitchen magic, sprinting past the knives to the pantry. The image shimmers and changes, and he sees Draco running full tilt through the Great Hall, eyes wide and terrified, yanking Harry to safety with only seconds to spare. It shifts again, and this time he sees himself exhausted and shaking, fighting with everything he has against the broadsword in the library. Another ripple, and Luna is bent over on her knees in the Room of Requirement, battling the demons of her own past. 

The image flickers and disappears, the pond draining away through the flagstones into the floor.

“ _All four_ houses have sacrificed,” Hermione calls out, her voice strong. “ _All four_ houses are here to heal.”

The founders look at one another and then back at Hermione.

“ _Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask_ ,” Hermione cries out. “All four houses are asking you to put things right.”

Harry keeps casting. They’re moving into the last lines of the spell, but he has no idea what will happen when it ends. This isn’t anything that they rehearsed for.

The founders look at one another, as if they’re carrying on an unspoken conversation. Rowena looks at Harry briefly, and then back at the other three, before she nods. He sees her step forward, right into the very space that Luna is occupying. Luna gasps, suddenly flooded with a bright light, her skin glowing. Before Harry can say or do anything, he feels a surge of energy unlike anything he’s ever experienced. He looks down at his own hands, fiery and illuminated from within. 

“ _Hold the spell_ ,” Hermione gasps, and he realises that all of the magic in the ritual is now flowing through them and into the centre of the circle. It’s too much. It would have been too much had it only been the four of the them, but the four of them imbued with all of the power of the founders is catastrophic. She collapses to the floor.

“Hermione!” he screams, trying to drop his wand, trying to stop the enchantment. He can’t do anything, though, with such an overwhelming force flowing through him. It spills out of him. He feels it through his fingertips and his toes. Feels all the places where it touches the stone of the walls. Feels it flow out further through corridors and staircases. Feels it in wooden beams and roof tiles. Feels it down through the foundations and into the rock below.

“ _Hermione!_ ” he sobs. She lies unmoving, all the potential in the room flying into her as anchor.

_Harry. Harry!_

He hears his name, but he can’t concentrate. He needs to break out of this. He needs to help her.

_HARRY!_

He feels for the edges of his own magic, lost in the torrent of power surrounding him. If he can just —

“ _Harry!_ ” It’s Draco, he realises with a start, his head snapping to his left. Draco’s whole body glows with unearthly light. He stands strong and unbowed, wand out. He looks relieved to finally have Harry’s attention. “She’s okay. She’s going to be okay. We prepared for this. _Finish the spell_.”

Draco can’t be right. Hermione doesn’t look remotely okay, crumpled on the floor with the heat and fire of so much raw magic coursing through her, but Harry doesn’t know what else to do. So he does as he’s told.

Three lines to go now. 

Then two.

The last words trip off his tongue.

 _Finite Incantatem_.

There’s an almighty bang. The floor rocks beneath him and Harry is knocked to the ground. An explosion of light and magic bursts out overhead, so severe it feels like it burns his eyes even though they’re closed. All the power leaves him in a final cataclysmic rush.

Then, nothing.

~

Harry comes back to himself slowly.

He’s aware of all the places his body aches — the way he feels a kind of bone-deep exhaustion, like after a day of duelling training or a particularly tough raid. But he feels cocooned and warm. A pillow is soft under his face and he’s wrapped in luxurious sheets. He blinks slowly, feeling his eyes swim a little as they try to adjust.

He’s in a room he doesn’t recognise. 

Five beds line the walls, each covered in rich, embroidered quilts. 

He struggles up to a sitting position, feeling his muscles protest, and watching as one by one, Luna, Hannah, Draco and Hermione do the same.

“Where are we?” Hannah whispers, rubbing at her eyes.

In the centre of the room is a low table, absolutely laden with food. Baskets of fresh fruit and bread that smells as if it’s been freshly baked. Harry’s stomach lets out an embarrassing growl but he can’t concentrate on it, pushing back the thick covers. He looks down at the comfortable red and gold pyjamas he’s wearing in confusion. His clothes — cleaner than he’s seen them in days — and his pack are sitting neatly on the chair beside his bed.

He gets out of bed and crosses the room quickly to Hermione, who is studying the sleeve of her own pyjama jacket with interest.

“Are you okay?” he asks urgently, sitting down on her bedside and reaching for her. She folds into his arms and gives him a warm hug, nodding against his chest. He feels something knotted tight within him start to relax. It’s a little easier to breathe. They’ve all made it through.

Draco comes to stand beside them and Harry launches up, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in his neck. “I thought you’d …” He pulls back to glance at Hermione. “I thought you both had…”

Draco shakes his head softly, tangling his fingers together with Harry’s with a smile. 

“We talked about it,” Hermione says, pushing back her own bedclothes and swinging her legs out slowly with a groan. “We worked through a bunch of contingencies yesterday.”

“Contingencies?” Hannah says with a laugh. “That’s one word for it. Gods, it was _terrifying_ when they all appeared like that, I thought I was going to wet myself.”

Luna is standing by the table eating grapes and looking about the room with interest.

“This is lovely, isn’t it?” she says, twirling around as she looks up at the decorative hangings. Harry takes another look at their surroundings, realising he recognises the carved Hogwarts crest over the glowing fireplace.

“We’re still in the Room of Requirement?” he asks in confusion.

Hermione nods. “I think so.”

“Did we...did it…” Hannah doesn’t even seem to want to ask the question thundering in Harry’s mind. _Did it work?_

“Oh thank fucking Merlin there’s food,” he hears a voice behind him. “You left me nothing but stew and that awful dandelion tea Luna likes.”

 _Ron_.

Sure enough, Ron is limping in to the room a little cautiously, but looking well-rested and not at all like he’s suffered from any particular lack of things to eat over the last few days. Hermione immediately bursts into tears, dashing across and launching herself at him, and he scoops her up into a kiss.

They all crowd around, laughing and hugging and patting Ron on the back. Harry’s so grateful to see him that he doesn’t even realise Draco’s hung back a step until he reaches behind for him with his hand, interlocking their fingers again.

“I really thought you’d blown the whole place up,” Ron says, tugging Hermione by the waist over to the table and stuffing a pastry in his mouth. “Ohhhh, that’s good.”

“What happened?” she asks, concerned.

“Well, when you didn’t come back I tried to find you,” he says, reaching for a croissant stuffed with ham and cheese. “But I couldn’t find a way up. So then I thought maybe the best thing to do was to try to get back outside and get help, but no luck there either. Whole place was sealed up like a drum. So figured I’d just have to sit tight until you pulled it off.”

He gives Hermione another squeeze. “I knew you would,” he says, beaming with pride.

She lets out a broken little sob. “Oh, we’ve got so much to tell you.”

Ron looks around at all of them. “Reckon you do.” He pauses, taking in Harry and Draco’s joined hands and gives Harry an exasperated roll of his eyes while grinning. “Reckon we could all do with a bit more talking in general.”

Harry feels his face heat. He smiles back.

“What happened though?” Luna asks again. “When we finished the ritual?”

“Right,” Ron continues, around a mouthful of ham. “I could tell you’d started. There was this terrible shaking and it felt like the whole bloody castle was going to come down. Worse than in the Great Hall. I got under my bed and just sort of held on. There was an almighty bloody explosion, and I thought, _well this is it_. And then there was silence.”

Harry thinks about how terrifying it must have been, to be all alone.

“I was too scared to come out for a while,” Ron confesses. “I was still half-convinced the roof was going to fall in. But eventually nothing seemed to be happening, so I tried casting _Lumos_.” 

He waves his wand. Harry’s never been more grateful to see a tiny ball of light in his life.

Luna claps her hands delightedly and pulls out her own wand, sending a row of macarons dancing above the table. “Oh, that feels so good!”

“So, I thought, if my magic was back, I could probably come and find you. And, here you are.”

“But did it work?” Hannah asks. “What’s happened to the castle?”

Ron gives a shrug. “It was still pretty dark. But the moving staircases shifted into position just fine. I walked right up here, no ghosts, no knives.” 

They look at each other, a little disheartened. Somehow Harry imagined that there would be a miraculous restoration. That there’d be light and fresh air and the sound of children’s voices ringing through the halls. The reality seems more confusing.

“Well, let’s get dressed and go see,” Hermione decides. 

They pull on their clothes and boots. Harry stuffs some tiny quiches in his mouth and tucks an apple in his pack. He stops beside Draco’s bed and watches him fold the green and silver pyjamas he’d been wearing and tuck them under the pillow.

“Who are you leaving them for?” he asks with a laugh. 

Draco gives a small shrug. “Whoever needs them next.”

“Are you alright? Really?” Harry asks as he watches Draco shoulder his pack and crouch to lace his boots. “Because for a minute there, it felt like —”

He straightens up and is suddenly very close to Harry, who quickly loses his train of thought. 

Draco puts his palm gently against Harry’s cheek. Harry very much wants to kiss him, but there’s a room full of people behind him who are probably staring, and mostly he just wants to know that Draco’s okay.

“We’re all in one piece,” Draco says softly, which is only sort of reassuring. “Let’s get out of here.”

The first thing they notice in the corridor is that the lights are now on.

“Well, that’s a lot better than on the way up,” Ron says. Hermione gently draws the door to the Room of Requirement closed behind them, and it vanishes back into the stone.

“Look!” Hannah calls, pointing at a large canvas hanging on the other side of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. It’s a pastoral scene depicting a Welsh valley. Wandering down the hillside is a flock of sheep.

Hermione hurries to a nearby classroom and throws open the door. The others rush to follow. Inside, the room is still littered with rubble but immediately Harry sees what she’s looking for. 

_Windows_.

The panes of glass have knitted themselves back together and the walls have made space. He can see blue sky and _clouds_.

Hermione strides across and throws the catch, pushing the frame out into the bright light of a sunny day. 

Hogwarts is opening itself up again.

They descend through the castle carefully. The idea that all the threats have truly disappeared is hard to believe, given everything they’ve faced. But at each corner, and on every floor, they see nothing but signs of nascent life.

Broken furniture sorts itself into piles of legs and seats and desktops, and then gradually starts to reassemble itself. Crumbled chunks of masonry dance around each other, before stacking themselves back up into archways and plinths. Spell-damaged tapestries unravel and rethread themselves. Scorch-marks and cracks smooth out and disappear.

Everywhere they walk, creative magic feels thick in the air.

A flurry of activity from the library reveals the books reshelving themselves at a dizzying pace. A pile of textbooks near the door restack, revealing a copy of _The Monster Book of Monsters_. It gives a vicious little snap and Hermione fairly sobs with relief.

The staircases move into place again, and the little group makes its way down to the Great Hall.

The enormous doors are back on their hinges, and Luna is the one to cry out this time in joy at seeing the stained glass pieces soaring upwards like a delicate rainfall in reverse, each fragment settling carefully into its rightful place. As they step across the threshold, the four house banners unfurl to hang above them.

“We really did it,” Hannah breathes in awe.

They leave the Hall and walk towards the giant doors to the school, pushing them gently out into the sun. Harry takes a deep lungful of air, smiling at the sight of the lake shining before them.

Hannah squeals, dropping her pack and running across the stone courtyard. 

Hurrying towards them is Neville, and with him Hagrid and Headmistress McGonagall.

Hannah is sobbing too much to say anything sensible to Neville, but he seems so glad to see her he doesn’t care, stroking her hair back off her face and kissing her forehead, holding her close.

“I can hardly believe it,” McGonagall says, staring up at the castle in awe. 

Harry gives Hagrid a hug. “How did you know to come?” 

Hagrid pats him on the arm with a large palm. “Longbottom turned up in hospital, unable to tell ’em anything about where ‘e’d been.”

Neville looks at them all apologetically. “The Fidelius,” he explains. “When I woke up, I kept trying to ask for help, but I couldn’t get anything out.”

Hermione looks upset by this, but Ron gives her a one-armed comforting hug.

“Eventually, I went to Canonbury and convinced Hagrid there was an Acromantula that needed our help. Headmistress McGonagall was the only person he knew with permission to be on the school grounds.”

“We got here just in time to see _quite_ the eruption of magic,” McGonagall says. She fixes Hermione with a shrewd expression. “This is an _extraordinary_ accomplishment, Ms Granger. However did you manage it?”

Hermione looks around at the others in turn, even reaching out to squeeze Draco’s arm briefly. “Honestly, Professor. I had a lot of help.”

McGonagall begins to fire off a succession of Patronuses: to the Ministry, the Hogwarts Governors, St Mungo’s. Soon they’re surrounded on the school steps by people and it feels overwhelming after so many days of isolation.

A row breaks out almost immediately between the Deputy Minister, who wants to call the Aurors to arrest them all, and the gnarled little wizard who heads the Board of Governors, Augustus Frankopan. 

“We can clear up any _trivial_ legal matters later,” Frankopan says dismissively. “Clearly, the heroes who have achieved this _remarkable_ outcome need some time to recover. Ah, look. Here come the photographers I owled from the _Prophet_.”

The Deputy Minister goes a little purple in the face, glaring in particular at Draco, who has drifted off to the cloisters and is looking out over the grounds, and stalks away in disgust. It won’t be the last they hear from him, Harry’s sure of it.

A Healer kneels beside Harry where he sits on the stone steps in the sun. She runs through a battery of diagnostic charms.

“A little magical exhaustion,” she concludes finally, writing some notes on a piece of parchment. “Nothing some rest and a few potions won’t cure.”

Harry nods and takes the prescription gratefully. He gets up, groaning a little at the ache in his muscles. Above him, several stone gargoyles flap their wings and settle back into their rightful places.

He walks to join Draco, pressing their arms together where they lean on the stone balustrade. 

“How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” Draco answers, staring at the lake. “A little deflated. I can’t believe it happened, really.”

Harry studies his profile. His bright blond hair falling softly across his face in the breeze. His stupidly patrician features. The long, lean lines of him — tall and strong and unbroken, even after everything.

“They want to take some pictures,” Harry says. 

Draco chuckles and shakes his head. “No, you go, I’ll just —”

“You’ll _just_ come with me, stand there with us all, and smile,” Harry says, reaching down to take Draco’s hand. “It will be terrible and we’ll both hate it. But this is how it changes.”

This is how they start to make something new for themselves.

“I mean, if you want to,” Harry murmurs, suddenly uncertain. “You’re released from the Vow now.”

Draco opens his mouth to object, but then closes it again. He looks around at the courtyard. 

“This is the last place I saw you, that day.”

Harry nods. He remembers.

“I couldn’t believe you’d survived. That you’d finally managed to put a stop to it all. I was so bloody grateful for you. I hated you so much and at the same time I was so _thankful_ to you that I had a second chance.”

Harry gives his hand a squeeze, grateful for what feels like his own second chance.

“Let’s both of us make the most of it then, shall we?”

Draco leans in to kiss him.

Above them, the Hogwarts clock tower starts to chime.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for coming along for the ride. A [tumblr post to share is here!](https://harryromper.tumblr.com/post/186532017311/fic-turn-from-stone-pairings-harry)


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